Venue News & Notes: Detroit Dual-Team Arena a Possibility

Reaction ranged from ecstatic to skeptical this week as word spread that Detroit Pistons owner Karen Davidson has given the Ilitch family an exclusive 30-day window to make a winning bid for the team and its parent Palace Sports & Entertainment. The deal, if it happens, could lead to a new dual-team arena downtown for the Pistons and the Ilitch-owned Red Wings hockey club. That, in turn, would further boost the entertainment options in a downtown that already boasts three casinos, two other major-league stadiums, the Fox Theatre, the Detroit Opera House, and other venues. “This could be the tipping point for our city,” said an ecstatic Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh. “We need hope”…

…Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane expressed optimism this week that the team will receive a recommended stadium site from Major League Baseball soon. It has been 18 months since baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointed a committee to research and recommend a Bay Area stadium site for the A’s. Beane’s comments were vague. “I think we’re going to be playing in a new stadium at some point here soon,” said Beane, also a minority owner of the club. “I have no inside [information]. The only thing we’ve been told is that [the report will come] sooner than later. I know that’s pretty ambiguous, but we anticipate it being sooner than later, and hopefully very soon”…

…American sports and entertainment giant AEG has no plans of retaining the running track in London’s Olympic Stadium if it wins its joint bid with Premier club Tottenham to move into the venue after the 2012 Games. AEG’s proposal goes against the repeated pledge by London Olympics organizers to keep track and field as a permanent feature of the $853 million stadium. Revealing details of the bid for the first time this week, AEG President Tim Leiweke said it wouldn’t make economic sense to keep the stadium geared for athletics after the Olympics because of a lack of major track and field events…

…There appears to be one record Jerry Jones’s record-breaking football stadium won’t be able to break. The National Football League official in charge of the Super Bowl said he doesn’t expect Cowboys Stadium to set the attendance record for that championship game in February. Team and local host-committee officials have previously mentioned they were hoping for a record crowd, which they believed was possible at the world’s largest domed stadium. The 1980 NFL championship drew a crowd of 103,985 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA — a crowd the Cowboys surpassed in the team’s regular-season debut last year.

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