Minnesota United's Allianz Field Takes the Soccer-Specific Venue to New Heights

Minnesota United's Allianz Field Takes the Soccer-Specific Venue to New Heights Set to host its first MLS match on April 13, the 19,400-seat facility is the latest jewel of MLS expansion By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Friday, March 29, 2019 - 3:09 pm

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American soccer is in a golden age of stadium development. In just the past five years, six new venues have opened as homes for Major League Soccer clubs, and five of them are soccer-specific venues (the sixth is Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and Atlanta United fans have done an admirable job making that NFL facility feel like a soccer-specific stadium).

Allianz Field, the new home of MLS's Minnesota United FC, is set to host its first official match on April 13.

The latest venue is Allianz Field, rising near Interstate 94 in the Midway neighborhood of Saint Paul, MN, and shimmering in the night with its multicolored LED-lighting exterior. Of all the new stadiums cropping up across the country to host the beautiful game, the new home of Minnesota United FC may just be - depending on whom you ask - the sleekest one yet.

Opening for its first MLS match on April 13 (vs. NYCFC, 5 p.m. ET, ESPN2), Allianz Field is a 19,400-seat, open-air (yes, even in Minnesota) facility designed by the global firm Populus. It has garnered much praise nationwide both for its design and for becoming one of just four MLS venues to be built entirely with private funds. Its $250 million price tag is nothing to sniff at for a venue of its size, but, when that is compared with the more than $1 billion cost of building U.S. Bank Stadium in Downtown Minneapolis, this place is a bona fide bargain.

In-stadium fan experience is where Allianz Field promises to truly shine. Sure, it has fantastic sightlines and fun, accessible amenities like its Brew Hall (which features more than 90 unique taps and is open to the public year-round), but it's Minnesota United's in-house video-production and operations team that will be tasked with jacking up Loons' support.

The Supporters' Videoboard

The crown jewel of Allianz Field is its 116- x 22-ft (2304- x 456-pixels) Daktronics videoboard at the back of the stadium's south side. It looms over the 2,920-seat Supporters Section, where many of the crowd's rowdiest of fans will stand, cheer, and sing throughout the game.

Allianz Field's 2,304- x 456-ft. primary videoboard, designed by Daktronics, stretches across the top of the Supporters Section.

The main board, a 15mm screen, is accompanied by 13 LED displays (also from Daktronics) throughout the stadium, including two smaller boards embedded in the Supporters Section.

Having spent its first two MLS seasons handling home matches at TCF Stadium in Minneapolis (home of the University of Minnesota's football team), the Minnesota United video crew is thrilled by the prospect of having videoboards to call its own.

Having complete ownership of all of the displays and the day-to-day workflow is going to be so much better for us, says Daniel Claxton, senior director, production and match day presentation, Minnesota United FC, who joined the club fulltime about a year ago. Loading is easier, and we'll be able to come in and test content whenever we need to. We're spending much more time in here and taking the time to tweak to get this ready to go.

In addition to the video action inside the bowl, there's a Daktronics 2,800- x 675-pixels screen in the building's Stadium Club, which is reserved for Club Level season-ticket holders. The board can serve as a carbon copy of the primary video board, but Cole Mayer, production engineer, Minnesota United FC, expects it to be used as a quad box to display the broadcast of the game and other MLS match and advertising-related elements.

In the stadium's video rack room, a Daktronics VP-6000 video processor handles all signal-input and -refinement functions, such as video mixing and keying effects, for the two large Dak displays.

A Control Room for a New Era

Allianz Field's video-control room is a 1080p 59.94 HD facility that Claxton and the MNUFC video team built in collaboration with WJHW and Alpha Video, the popular facility integrator that also calls Minnesota home.

Allianz Field's various video displays are supported by a control room near the south side of the stadium built with a 1080p infrastructure.

The room is built around a Ross Carbonite Black (3M/E) sports-production switcher with a Ross Ultrix router as74 i0ts backbone. There are three channels of Ross Xpression for graphics, and an Evertz DreamCatcher DC-ONE (12 channels in, four out) replay system and a four-channel Evertz Clip Player support playback for the big screen. Comms have been entrusted to RTS and its Odin intercom matrix. The team also uses RTS Roameo, a wireless intercom system. There's Dante audio networking and the stadium's IPTV system and digital signage is supported by VITEC.

Going 1080p was a huge factor for Claxton, not only for its resolution quality but for helping streamline all of MNUFC's video-content production and operations. Now all video created by the team can be used anywhere: videoboards, broadcast, digital, or social.

That was a big thing that I wanted to do, says Claxton. From a postproduction standpoint, it helps us use the content outside of the control room day to day. TCF [Stadium] is 720, so we typically didn't use much of the footage that we got out of our [in-stadium] replay systems. We wanted to get more use out of that stuff.

To program the various screens, MNUFC deploys five Sony cameras (four operated on tripods, one a roaming wireless) throughout the stadium, shooting at 1080p from traditional angles. The cameras are fitted with Canon glass, including the KJ20x8.2B portable 20X HD lens with 2X zoom e

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2019/03/29/minnesota-uniteds-allianz-field...
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