Venue News: Calgary Flames Unveil Arena Plan; Cincinnati Bengals Join NFL Push to Upgrade Video

The Calgary Flames won’t play in the Saddledome much longer if their proposed $890 million hockey arena and associated fieldhouse/stadium gets built, writes Sports Illustrated. During a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Flames CEO Ken King showed off the massive project which includes a new 18,000-seat NHL arena that would be built in conjunction with a public fieldhouse that can double — with the use of retractable seats — as a stadium for CFL football. Besides the new rink for the Flames, the arena portion of the project would include 20,000 seats for concerts and a space for professional lacrosse. The 1.4 million square foot community fieldhouse would house a full FIFA-sized soccer field and a running track…

…More than $20 million of improvements to Paul Brown Stadium will be on display for fans at Friday night’s Bengals preseason opener against the New York Giants, according to WLWT. New HD video boards and sideline LED boards have been installed. The main video boards are more than twice the size of the previous boards, measuring 130-by-36 feet, the team said. In addition to being much larger, the Bengals said the HD boards will appear brighter and sharper. The LED boards now stretch the entire length of the sidelines and will allow for additional information, including fantasy stats and out of town scores…

…Japan approved guidelines for its Olympic stadium last Friday, vowing to build an “athletes’ first” stadium as cheaply as possible and complete it by March 2020, a year later than planned, but without including any cost estimates or limits, writes The Guardian. Japan scrapped its original plan for the national stadium last month in the face of widespread outrage after costs ballooned to £1.34bn ($2.1bn), nearly twice the original estimates – an unusual move for an Olympic host city this late in the process. Cost estimates will be set in a later plan to be released later this month or early in September but officials have said their aim is to do everything as cheaply as possible, including having a roof over spectator seats only…

…As it sits low to the ground, Ball State University’s new video board certainly looks impressive, writes the Star Press. Just before noon Thursday, it quietly rose toward the rafters in the expansive space high in Worthen Arena, ready for a new-student event set for later in the day. All told, the project, including the full scoreboard and new audio system, cost around $1.2 million, but it was less than renting the temporary boards long-term (the school has used that for both football and basketball the past two seasons)…

…Texans’ fans won’t just have the tomorrow’s 2015 season kick-off to be happy about. They’ll also be cheering on the new wireless upgrade installed at NRG Stadium, writes Click2Houston. Verizon Wireless spent $12 million to enhance the game-day experience for Texans fans.  The company constructed and activated a distributed antenna system (DAS) and more XTLE network technology at the stadium. NRG Stadium now has 783 antennas in order to increase capacity by four times of the current system…

…Arthur Ashe Stadium, the U.S. Open’s center court, underwent further construction to its retractable roof last week at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The roof will be ready for use in 2016. Newsday has photos of the project’s progress.