The Sacramento Kings plan to make Golden 1 Center the world’s most connected arena by agreeing to a multi-year partnership with Comcast Corp.

“The best fans in the world deserve the most connected arena in the world,” said Kings President Chris Granger in a statement. “Our partnership with Comcast enables fans and visitors to share their experiences and connect online seamlessly. It also ensures that Golden 1 Center, the public plaza, and DOCO’s connectivity will remain well above industry standards, even as consumer technology improves.”

According to the Kings’ press release, Comcast will install two, 100-gigabit Ethernet dedicated Internet circuits.

“The services will provide the back-end infrastructure enabling the team to provide free Wi-Fi for fans, power the Kings mobile app, and supply cloud-based voice and unified communications services for team members at the arena and at the team’s corporate offices,” the press release said. “As a result, the Internet connection at Golden 1 Center, as well as the public plaza and Downtown Commons (DOCO), will be over 17,000 times faster than the average home Internet connection, with the ability to handle more than 225,000 Instagram photo posts per second.”

Comcast Business will also provide the in-house video to TV monitors in the arena.

“We’re pleased to extend Comcast’s ever-evolving partnership with the Sacramento Kings and honored that Comcast Business will allow the fervent fans at Golden 1 Center to experience a live event in innovative and exciting ways, from ubiquitous Wi-Fi to advanced mobile applications and rich video content,” said Comcast’s Regional Vice President of Business Services for California Ted Girdner in a statement. “This agreement is representative of how Comcast can deliver reliable, high-capacity Internet connectivity for fans, media, and arena team members while supporting various multimedia initiatives by deploying our full suite of consumer and business products.”

(Image: Sacramento Kings)

We are pleased to announce that John Quiñones will be our keynote speaker at the 2016 Performing Arts Managers Conference (PAMC) in San Antonio, Texas, March 7-9.

Quiñones has won seven national Emmy Awards for his Primetime Live, Burning Questions, and 20/20 work. He was awarded an Emmy for his coverage of the Congo’s virgin rainforest, which also won the Ark Trust Wildlife Award, and in 1990 he received an Emmy for Window in the Past, a look at the Yanomamo Indians. He received a National Emmy Award for his work on the ABC documentary Burning Questions—The Poisoning of America, which aired in September 1988 and was also honored with a World Hunger Media Award and a Citation from the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for To Save the Children, his 1990 report on the homeless children of Bogota. Among his other prestigious awards are the First Prize in International Reporting and the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for his piece on Modern Slavery — Children Sugar Cane Cutters in the Dominican Republic.

Registration is currently open for PAMC. See you in San Antonio!

The Dallas Mavericks are continuing a partnership for three years it started in January 2015 with Tixsee, a virtual ticket-buying company.

“We aren’t in the business of selling tickets, we are in the business of selling unique and shared experiences,” said Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner, in a statement. “Tixsee’s product elevates ticketing technology, and further reinforces our commitment to creating memorable and entertaining experiences for our fans.”

The Mavericks are the first professional sports team to use Tixsee’s platform, which offers 360-degree panoramic virtual tours through Google Street View. The tour of the American Airlines Center features 12,444 high-res, panoramic photos stitched together to create 1,037 360-degree images. In short, click on a section in the arena and see what your view will look like before buying a ticket. You can experience it for yourself at mavs.com/tour.

“When we launched Tixsee, it was our goal to partner with the Mavs first because of their emphasis on both fan experiences, and technological innovation,” Tixsee co-founder and CEO Brett Dowling said in a statement. “The Mavs partnership has been vital to our growth. In addition, we are planning further developments including mobile apps to extend beyond ticketing.”

It’s been a bit since I posted a video from Richard Wiseman. But since it’s holidays time and a lot of you will be thinking about being more successful in the new year, I think this is a good video to start you off on the right path. As Wiseman says, success is about “the pledge, plan, and plot.”

As previously mentioned, HOK and the United Soccer League (USL) launched a stadium development initiative to have all USL clubs in soccer-specific stadiums by 2020. At last week’s USL Winter Summit, HOK announced they are creating a prototype 10,000-seat USL Stadium, which would be scalable for all clubs that wish to utilize it.

With 28 teams currently, USL is the largest soccer league in North America and has only continued to grow with a majority of the clubs averaging 4,000 to 6,000 fans per game during the 2015 season when overall league attendance reached one million for the first time. In addition to a partnership with Major League Soccer (MLS) where USL clubs serve as their minor league affiliates, the USL has grown from 20 clubs in 2014 to a committed 30 clubs for the 2016 season.

New USL stadiums should be expected in the near future in at least Louisville, Kentucky; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Reno, Nevada; where those respective clubs currently play in minor league baseball stadiums. Joining in 2016 as an expansion team, Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, Texas, is constructing its 10,000-seat stadium that is modeled after the Houston Dynamo’s BBVA Stadium, its MLS affiliate.

Between MLS and USL, new soccer specific stadiums could be constructed in Orlando, Florida; Minnesota; Miami, Florida; Los Angeles, California; Sacramento, California; Louisville; Rio Grande Valley; Tulsa; and Reno; just within the next four years. I believe other markets such as Austin, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Cincinnati, Ohio; could be joining that list in the near future as well. That is quite a few new venues with new job opportunities for IAVM members.

“It’s not a tenant in a building. They are in control of that venue, can brand and dress that venue and can control the revenue streams with that venue, and operate that venue for other events outside the game. That’s huge. That’s critical. That’s when we start to reach a tipping point here.” said Chris DeVolder of HOK “ Looking ahead five years, I think the sky’s the limit.”

(Image: RGVFC.com)