SunTrust Park is hosting the Visa Big Air event on Friday and Saturday night in the "latest -- and most extreme -- example of the Braves' effort to expand the use of their ballpark far beyond baseball," according to Tim Tucker of the ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION. Eight hundred tons of manufactured snow will go into creating a "massive ski-jump structure" that will start 150 feet above center field. The Big Air event is being "hosted by the Braves in partnership with U.S. Ski & Snowboard." Braves President & CEO Derek Schiller said, "We are interested in building very unique events to complement the 81 baseball games, whether that be during the season or the offseason. That is definitely part of our business plan and part of what we are as an organization." Tucker noted work began the day after Thanksgiving on the 15-story, 410-foot-long steel scaffold jump structure, which "consists of about 29,000 unique pieces." USS CEO Tiger Shaw is expecting "crowds totaling between 10,000 and 20,000" for the two-day event. The Big Air event, which was held at Fenway Park in '16, is part of the Utah-based USS' "efforts to widen its audience by bringing the sports to metro areas." The NGB "hopes to host a Big Air event annually in major U.S. cities" leading up to the '22 Beijing Games. The men's and women's competition, which will feature 164 free skiers and snowboarders from 27 nations, will be "televised live" on NBC Sports beginning at 7:00pm ET both nights. Shaw said, "We knew the novelty of putting a giant ski jump in the Braves stadium would attract a lot of interest. I think there's incredible curiosity about having a snow-based event in a ballpark in Georgia" (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 12/19).
