Sporting KC and LSP Up for Sports Business Awards

Today, Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily came out with their nominees for the 2012 Sports Business Awards, and it was a good day for Sporting KC and Livestrong Sporting Park, as both are up for their Sports Business Awards this year. Sporting KC is up for Sports Team of the Year against the Boston Bruins, Dayton Dragons, Stewart-Haas Racing, and the Texas Rangers.

Livestrong Sporting Park is up for Sports Facility of the Year. KC's home stadium is up against 2012 NBA All-Star Game (Amway Center) and 2013 Super Bowl (Mercedes Benz Superdome), and Major League Baseball spring training destination Salt River Fields at Talking Stick. The winner's will be announced on May 23rd.

Stadium Design Information

The Sports Business Journal put out a story yesterday talking with the architecture firm, Populous, who is the firm that will be building the Wizards new stadium. Unfortunately you need a subscription to read the full article, but a poster on bigsoccer has given us that information. The article has lots of great insight into the new stadium. The main topic of discussion is the roof which according to the article will cover all 18,300 seats in the stadium, basing the design off of European stadiums, while at the same time making it unique to the Wizards. The article also touches on "the communal premium-dining concept" as the article calls it, talking about patios for the sky boxes as well as an exclusive Cauldron pub for members of the Cauldron that will be behind the section at the new stadium. The pub will be set up like a German beer hall and will be open on non-game days as well, giving people a place for watch parties for all sorts of events.

The article gives a much better picture of the stadium than what we had before, it still leaves a lot to the imagination, but what we have gives me great visions of what the stadium is going to be looking like once it is finished. Now let's starting getting the stadium up (once it's actually warm enough outside for any work at all to be done).

Venue Capacity

The Wizards may have finished at the bottom on MLS in attendance this past year, but they finished atop all sports when it comes to venue capacity. The Sports Business Journal (subscription only to read the article unfortunately) has complied the attendance for all the teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and MLS and compared them to the size of the stadiums they play in. The Wizards topped that list with 106.9% capacity for each home game. Of course the Journal does not take into account the fact that the Wizards played one game at Arrowhead, which bumped their average attendance over the 10,385 capacity that CAB has for soccer. Still an interesting stat for you. Here's the full list of teams that had a capacity average of 100%, thanks to a poster on bigsoccer.