Venue News: New York Cosmos Propose Belmont Park Stadium; Sporting KC Drops Livestrong from Venue Name

Compiled by Karen Hogan, Associate Editor, Sports Video Group

The revived New York Cosmos, a once-prominent professional soccer franchise in the 1970s, have proposed construction of a $400 million, privately funded, 25,000-seat stadium at Belmont Park in Elmont, team officials said Tuesday. The plan includes a 175-room hotel, restaurants, retail stores and a public park on the northern section of the property near the racetrack. Team officials said the project would create more than 3,000 full-time permanent jobs and generate $200 million in annual revenue. Team officials hope to break ground on the outdoor stadium, which would be located on a 28-acre parcel on the southeast corner of Hempstead Turnpike and the Cross Island Parkway, early next year…

…Kansas City’s Major League Soccer stadium will no longer display the Livestrong name following a disagreement between the team and the cancer charity founded by Lance Armstrong. Robb Heineman, the chief executive of Sporting KC, said in a statement two days ago that Livestrong was “utilizing aggressive tactics designed to force us into an unsatisfactory arrangement.” Sporting KC’s 18,467-seat soccer stadium had been named Livestrong Sporting Park since 2011 and will now be referred to as Sporting Park…

…The UNLV proposed stadium is getting a 100-yard video scoreboard to go along with their 60,000 seats. The 100-yard video board would be larger than the 80-yard video board at Cowboys Stadium. The idea for the large video board is to host “mega events” called UNLV Now. Allowing a multi-purpose stadium on the UNLV campus host other events outside of Rebel’s football is a way to make the stadium be financially viable…

…FirstEnergy Corp., an Akron, OH-based utility with customers in six states, reached a multiyear agreement to put its name on the Cleveland Browns’ stadium, the first time the National Football League team had a sponsor’s name on its home field. The agreement comes five months after Jimmy Haslam, bought the National Football League team for more than $1 billion. FirstEnergy has been a corporate partner of the Browns since 1999 and is the current scoreboard sponsor. Financial terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed in a joint statement. Once approved by the Cleveland City Council, the Browns’ stadium will become the 23rd of the NFL’s 31 venues to have a naming rights deal…

…The Charlotte City Council has given an early endorsement to the Carolina Panthers’ request for $125 million in public money for stadium renovations, voting 7-2 to gauge the support of the N.C. General Assembly. Under the city’s plan, discussed Monday night, a 1% tax on prepared food and beverages would be increased to 2%. That money would help pay for renovations for Bank of America Stadium, the team’s home since 1996. The total cost of the stadium renovations is reportedly more than $200 million.