Venue News: Chicago Bears Eye Larger Video Displays; Toyota Center Shelters Rockets Fans During Storm

The Chicago Bears will enhance the stadium experience for fans attending home games this season at Soldier Field with the addition of new video boards and an indoor club comparable to an upscale sports bar. New video boards in each end zone will be 128 feet by 40 feet or 310% larger than the current ones and will boast the highest picture quality in the NFL with a 1080P HD resolution, according to the team. LED ribbon panels along the east and west 300-level fascia will be increased to a span of 390 feet and there will be a new 444-foot long ribbon panel on the west 200-level fascia. All the LED ribbon panels will be 16mm resolution…

…Moments after the Houston Rockets had avoided being swept in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals with a 128-115 victory over the Golden State Warriors, Dwight Howard summed up the evening in six words. “We don’t want to go home,” said Howard, who scored 14 points and had 12 rebounds. Hours later, he and hundreds of others still hadn’t left the Toyota Center — but only because it was the safe thing to do. Fans were advised not to leave the arena near the end of the Rockets’ win over the Warriors because of severe weather conditions in the Houston area. The team posted a message on the scoreboard with 2:23 remaining, saying “we recommend remaining in your seats until the weather passes.” For some, including Howard, that wait took longer than expected. As of 3:50 a.m. CT, about 200 people remained in the arena…

…One of New York City’s most unusual construction projects recently went into overdrive, writes the Wall Street Journal. In Flushing, hundreds of workers and three giant cranes are working feverishly to erect a retractable roof over Arthur Ashe Stadium, the main venue at the U.S. Tennis Association’s Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, where the U.S. Open is played each year. The project is a dozen years—and several architectural studies—in the making, and it is finally beginning to take shape after a long winter of delays. The roof, which will cost about $150 million in privately funded money, won’t be operational until the 2016 tournament. But workers only have a few months to finish its underlying steel structure so the USTA can clean up the grounds in time for this year’s tournament, which begins at the end of August…

…As the concrete-and-steel behemoth that is the new stadium overtakes the eastern end of the downtown Minneapolis skyline, a similarly ambitious Minnesota Vikings executive team is building a technological marvel of programming that aims to thrill ticket holders on game days. For fans, game day begins when they pull out of their driveways, writes the Star Tribune. The Vikings will meet them there — at least in cyberspace. An app will provide traffic conditions, parking availability and directions to the least-congested stadium entrances. Then, as the fan’s feet hit the plaza, the pregame warm-up will end and a splashy gameday experience will begin…

…The San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders moved a step closer last week to building a new stadium near Los Angeles after a complex land deal was finalized on a site that could become the home of a shared $1.7 billion venue. According to the Associated Press, the transaction involving about 170 acres in Carson, a city of 93,000 people, came a day after the teams hired former San Francisco 49ers President Carmen Policy to spearhead the next stages of their push to relocate to the nation’s second-largest media market. The pace of activity in Carson underscored an increasing divide between the Chargers and San Diego, where local officials on Monday announced a financing plan for a replacement stadium even as the team a day later moved ahead on the Carson site…

…The Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs broke a new single-sporting event wireless traffic record – of its own, at that – with over five Terabytes and upwards of 474 Gigabytes within AT&T’s network for the 290,000 fans in attendance – about 15.3 million social media posts and videos worth of mobile data consumption. Considering that the venue has been around in Louisville, KY, since 1875, it’s unprecedented that such a landmark site can claim this distinction, writes SportTechie. Up until recently, it would be unfathomable for a fan attending Churchill Downs to receive an adequate signal on their smartphone – they would be better off placing a bet on any number of the stallions instead…

…The San Francisco 49ers won the SportsBusiness Journal’s “Sports Facility of the Year” award on Wednesday for Levi’s Stadium, writes CSN Bay Area. The state-of-the-art venue, located in Santa Clara, CA, debuted in 2014. Its first official sporting event was a match between the San Jose Earthquakes and Seattle Sounders, before opening up to its first full NFL season with the San Francisco 49ers. The $1.2 billion venue has 1.85 million square feet, seats approximately 68,500 and features 165 luxury suites and 8,500 club seats.