Venue News: Rams’ Lease Amended to Allow ‘Home’ Games in London; Tigers Plan New Video Board

The St. Louis Rams will be able to play a “home” game in England this year in exchange for boosting the number of weekends that the Edward Jones Dome can be booked for other uses during the football season. The team also agreed to pay temporary, game-day employees the hourly wages they would have earned at the Dome for the game against the New England Patriots. The agreement, which amends the Rams’ lease at the Dome, was approved Tuesday by the two public agencies that own and operate the building. It paves the way for the Rams to play the Patriots at London’s Wembley Stadium on Oct. 28. The lease had previously mandated that the Rams play all home games at the Dome…

…Comerica Park’s new video board — 6,000 square feet of high-definition video and graphics — is poised to become the fourth-biggest video board in Major League Baseball. As workers put together the new board on the corner of Brush and Adams, it’s the biggest project the stadium has seen — aside from the team itself — since the Detroit Tigers moved in the fences and moved the bullpens in the mid 2000s. The new scoreboard will be entirely LED. It will be wider than the old board, and be raised approximately 16 feet on the current structure so that it’s less obstructed from fans by the left-field upper deck. Even the Tigers lettering on the top of the scoreboard will be dynamic, state-of-the-art LED, allowing for special effects and color changes. The smaller board hanging below the main board, where pitch counts and radar-gun readings appear, will also be replaced. The new version will be twice as long, allowing for more information…

…National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern on Tuesday said the Sacramento Kings owners have agreed to make a substantial contribution to the city’s $387 million arena deal, but he did not disclose how much. Stern said he expects negotiations between the league and city to continue into the weekend. City officials have said they expect AEG, a Los Angeles-based arena operator, to put about $50 million into the deal as upfront money. The city is reported to have asked that the Kings put in about $85 million of their own money. Stern did not offer any hint whether the Kings have agreed to that amount, but indicated the team has agreed to put in some money…

… With significant real-estate activity at the rumored site of a new Detroit Red Wings arena, the talk is a new facility could be part of a larger mall complex. The area between Woodward Avenue and Cass near Temple, a blighted area, has emerged as a hot real-estate market in recent months, with several properties changing hands or in the midst of negotiations for a sale. With developer Al Traubman rumored to be looking at a downtown shopping center, the outlines of the plan become clearer: a new arena as part of a much larger development. This is the same site where a stop was added to light-rail plans several months ago, despite the lack of any current need for a stop.

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