Venue News: Minnesota Vikings Stadium Gets Name; College Football’s Largest Videoboard Takes Shape

The Minnesota Vikings will play in U.S. Bank Stadium starting next season, per a 20-year exclusive naming rights agreement with the banking behemoth, writes the Associated Press. The agreement was announced Monday. The two sides declined to disclose the cost of the contract.
The Vikings will play one more season at the University of Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium, named after a smaller, local rival of U.S. Bank. With corporate headquarters in downtown Minneapolis, U.S. Bank is the nation’s fifth-largest commercial bank…

The biggest video board in college football is taking shape, writes AL.com. The frame for the monster project at Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium is in place. The final beam topped the board’s skeleton Wednesday. The video board is expected to measure 10,830 square feet at 190×57 feet when it is completed in August. The $13.9 million project started in March and will cost the athletics department $3.5 million. The public-address system will be updated at an estimated cost of $1.5 million and ribbon boards throughout the stadium will carry a price tag of $1.5 million. The remainder of expenses include demolition and structural improvements to support the large scoreboard…

…The city of Glendale says it’s willing to renegotiate an arena lease for the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, but stands by its conflict-of-interest reasoning for canceling it in the first place, according to the Associated Press. In a brief statement, the Coyotes’ ownership group said it plans to honor the arena lease signed in 2013 and expects the city to do the same. Last week, the City Council voted to terminate the 15-year, $225 million agreement with the Coyotes, citing a conflict-of-interest law involving two ex-Glendale employees leaving to go to work for the team. The ordeal has intensified relocation speculation for the team with a long list of potential suitors waiting in the wings, including Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and Las Vegas…

…The USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows is big, and only getting bigger. There is a manifest destiny about the place, which soon enough will be insured for rain, writes the New York Daily News. The freshly completed superstructure that will house a towering, retractable roof was unveiled on Wednesday; the translucent, plastic material that completes the roof will not be in place until the 2016 U.S. Open. By then, there will also be a new, larger grandstand and an expanded campus with enough room for a new alleyway and food court. By 2018, the old Armstrong Stadium will be demolished to make way for a new, larger edition, built to be roof-ready in the not too distant future…

…The ongoing project of finding a new home for D.C. United has taken another step forward earlier this month as D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that they and the team have come to what seems to be a “final agreement”, writes The Sports Journal. The final agreement just builds on an earlier pact that was passed in December. It helps to clarify the size and timeline of the soccer-specific stadium, which is set to be located at Buzzard Point in southwest D.C. The management of the club decided that they would want to keep the team and the stadium in D.C. after they had received an offer from Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to move the team to Loudon County, which is about 40 miles from their current home, RFK Stadium…

…Sports events tend to leave massive environmental footprints with huge amounts of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, writes SportTechie.  Not to mention, they produce trash amounts in the tons.  These are the main reasons why the Sports and Environment Program, created by UN Environment Programme (UNEP)  in 1994, which makes a global effort to promote environmental awareness through athletics, and to encourage the design of sustainable sports facilities and equipment. New England Patriots owner, Robert Kraft, who is also the CEO and Chairman of The Kraft Group, joined the sustainability movement when the company planned and constructed Gillette Stadium.