Craft beer isn’t just for hip bars and brew snobs. It’s finding its way into stadiums and arenas all across North America, too, as part of an effort to improve attendee experience.

“Craft beers are slowly muscling their way into NHL arenas and other major-league sports venues as stadiums understand that the microbrew companies are offering a tasty, diversified product that fans desire,” Alan Snel recently reported for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

There’s a reason they’re becoming more popular with patrons: Quality.

“Just as Millennial tastes in foods have evolved away from the pedestrian, so, too, have their tastes in alcoholic beverages,” Bruce Horovitz reported for USA Today.

According to food research specialist firm Technomic, craft beer posted one of the largest percent gains of any beer category (14.4 percent) last year, and now accounts for 6.3 percent of total beer volume. And it’s projected to continue that trajectory this year.

In fact, Venues Today, in its June 2013 issue, asked, “In your opinion, which concession offering has most improved the average fan’s concessions experience?” Nineteen percent answered, “microbrews.”

And while there have been some hiccups in the past (e.g., selling “craft beer” from mainstream producers), there have been some success stories.

“For a trend-setter, look at what Delaware North Companies Sportservice is doing in Detroit this year at Comerica Park,” reported Darren Rovell for ESPN. “In right field, they have a craft beer stand that features 26 local brews, 10 on draft, 16 in bottles. You’ll pay more, $8.75 for the draft in the 16-ounce cups or $7.75 for the bottles, but the extra buck or two is often part of the trade-up culture we live in. Higher cost, greater value.”

Personally, I’d pay for a craft beer at a stadium. Would you?

(Image via Flickr: Jim Storer/Creative Commons)

Now here’s a venue that Marie from Breaking Bad* would surely love. The Ark Nova is an inflatable, mobile concert hall created by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor. It takes around two hours to inflate and accommodates approximately 500 people.

On Sept. 21, five related outdoor festivals took place across the U.S. The events, Red Bull’s Flugtag, translated as “Flight Day” in German, occurred in Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Miami; Dallas/Ft Worth; and Long Beach, CA. For those not familiar with the event, Red Bull Flugtag is perhaps best described as the Wright Brothers meet the Marx Brothers.

Flugtag participants gather teams of five people to conceive outrageous self-constructed gliders with a maximum wingspan of 28 feet and a maximum weight of 400 pounds (including a pilot). These flying machines are judged for creativity; then the pilot boards the craft and is pushed by his teammates off the top of a 30-foot high ramp in an effort to see which contraption will fly farthest (or in many cases fall fastest) into the water below. The light-hearted event is a perfect mix of family fun and youthful hipster exuberance mixed with the energy produced from drinking numerous Red Bulls.

In what might be considered one of the most ambitious and brilliant non-traditional branding campaigns ever, Red Bull has chosen to create one-of-a-kind community participation festivals such as a soapbox derby and flugtag flying event. As well, Red Bull has aligned itself with some of the world’s most spectacular professional sporting events featuring Red Bull products along the way. With Red Bull’s slogan “Red Bull Gives You Wings” it makes sense that many of their events involve flying or high-speed, high-energy, extreme activities including: auto racing, skiing, cliff diving, mountain biking, snowboarding, skateboarding and surfing—all geared towards GenX and GenY adrenaline junkies known for pushing their limits.

Being a spectator for this year’s Flugtag event in Irving/Las Colinas, TX, I was immediately taken with the massive amount of people at the event (an estimated 92,000 visitors gathered around Lake Caroline in Las Colinas). As the crowds swirled in front of my eyes, thoughts of crowd management raced through my head. With IAVM’s International Crowd Management Conference (ICMC) just weeks away, I realized that this event is the perfect example of why we encourage our venue professionals and outdoor festival operators to send their staff to attend ICMC.

With the sheer amount of coordination and planning necessary to keep both the crowds and the daredevil participants safe during this very successful day, I thought it might be interesting to learn more about how the event came together here in Texas. So I reached out to IAVM member venue, the Irving Convention & Visitors Bureau to get some answers. I was lucky enough to speak with Maura Gast, the Irving CVB’s Executive Director who took a personal interest and a lead role in bringing Red Bull Flugtag to Irving/Las Colinas.
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It’s a sad day here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area if you’re a Texas Rangers fan. Last night, the team lost out of advancing to the playoffs, and trips to Rangers Ballpark in Arlington are no more.

Come next spring, though, excitement of a new season and its possibilities will percolate. And besides the pleasures of sitting in the outfield and eating unlimited hot dogs, fans will have a greater chance of interacting with the stadium itself.

Last week, Major League Baseball introduced a partnership with Apple’s iBeacon technology to offer location-based information and offers for At the Ballpark app users.

“A little-known piece of technology baked into Apple’s iOS 7 lets app developers place physical touchstones called iBeacons around specific locations,” wrote Caitlin McGarry for Macworld. “Those beacons can prompt users to take an action or provide information when they are within the beacon’s radius. iBeacons use BLTE (Bluetooth low energy) technology for micro-location information.”

For example, the app will send notification discounts about food and merchandise based on an user’s location in the stadium.

“Once you start seeing what MLB (and plenty of other organizations like it) can do with iBeacons, it makes sense why Bluetooth Low Energy is suddenly so in vogue,” wrote Chris Valazco for TechCrunch. “The level of targeting and reach that a smartly assembled array of Bluetooth beacons provides could profoundly change how companies try to interact with us for better or worse. It certainly doesn’t hurt that support for Bluetooth LE is something both Apple and Google have committed to either—iDevices as old as the 4S can take advantage of these features if they’re running iOS 7, and Google confirmed that Bluetooth LE support would be one of the main additions to Android 4.3. That means a huge swath of the devices out there and in the pipeline will be ready to, well, play ball with this newfangled approach to interaction.”

What other tools are stadiums using to keep the fans coming out to events? Register for the 2013 Stadiums Hybrid Meeting to find out. Presented by industry veterans, this hybrid meeting will explore these challenges and highlight some of the innovative approaches sports teams, event promoters, and stadium operators are taking to make the in-stadium experience something fans do not want to miss.

(Image via Flickr: Steven Martin/Creative Commons)

7 Architectural Sins Committed Around the World
-Huffington Post

With the recent news that Rafael Viñoly Architects’ 20 Fenchurch Street (or the “Walkie Talkie“) in London has been producing an unusually hot solar reflection, dubbed the “Death Ray,” we’ve put together a list of seven architectural blunders around the world — from the worrying to the downright absurd.

See also: Towering New Skyscraper in London Blamed for Melting Cars, Setting Fires

New California Law Targets Massive Online Ticket-scalping Scheme
-The Christian Science Monitor

A new California law makes it illegal to use software to trick online ticket-sellers into selling huge numbers of tickets to scalpers, who then resell them at a higher price.

The Best Arenas and Stadiums in America
-Rolling Stone

For the last installment in a five-part series on great music venues, Rolling Stone polled 26 insiders and musicians – from top managers to Miranda Lambert – and came up with a list of the nation’s coolest arenas and stadiums. Read on for our expert panel’s picks, and visit our Venues that Rock page for an interactive map and much more. Continue Reading →