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Facilities

Preview center specialist Downstream hopes to add Rams

Don Muret
The newest building boom in sports keeps John Searby on his toes competing for jobs at the big league level.

Searby is director of sports for Downstream, a Portland agency specializing in designing preview centers, which teams build to market premium seats at arenas and stadiums. In the past four years, Downstream has won jobs to design preview centers for the Chicago Cubs, Sacramento Kings, Edmonton Oilers, Atlanta Braves, LA Galaxy and, most recently, the Milwaukee Bucks and D.C. United.

Downstream also is a finalist to design the preview center for the Los Angeles Rams’ new stadium, which at $2.5 billion in hard construction costs represents the most expensive sports development in North America. The preview center alone is expected to run between $3 million and $4 million, making it the costliest facility in that space. It will take up about 10,000 square feet in an office building in Playa Vista, Calif., 4 miles south of the stadium site in Inglewood, Searby said.

Legends Global Sales, the Rams’ sales agency, is in charge of the preview center and is expected to hire a designer before July 1 to work on the project. The center is expected to open by early next year, after the Rams complete their first of three seasons at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before moving into their new digs for the 2019 NFL season.

The technology with which Downstream brings preview centers to life continues to evolve through the use of augmented reality and virtual reality, now common features for those projects. The Kings use both at their preview center overlooking Golden 1 Center, their new arena opening this fall. The same is true for the Bucks and for D.C. United, which has a large 3-D printed model of its proposed
Downstream client Telstra’s “device lab” table connects with customers’ phones via Bluetooth.
Photos by: COURTESY OF DOWNSTREAM (2)
stadium extending to points of interest surrounding the venue with public transit stops, bike trails, and bars and restaurants, Searby said.

Downstream itself isn’t a software company but it works with those technologies every day to customize products for its sports clients, Searby said. Its competitors include Advent, Dimensional Innovations, Channel 1, Shawmut Design & Construction, and Experience 49.

Downstream doesn’t do the majority of its work in sports. Sixty percent of what it does is tied to designing corporate business centers, and it is in that space where technology is “light years ahead of sports” for firms such as Microsoft, Juniper Networks and Verizon showcasing their products for consumers and in a business-to-business setting, Searby said. The Telstra Icon Store in Sydney, for example, engages customers through Bluetooth recognition software.

Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, is a Downstream client.

Patrons can place their smartphones on the store’s “device lab” table, which connects with phones’ Bluetooth systems and tracks the user profiles, sending information on whatever it is they are exploring in the store. It’s a system that is similar to the early use of beacon technology in sports venues.

The technology allows Telstra to follow up with consumers for potential sales and upgrades, Searby said.
Searby, a former college basketball coach, works out of Charlotte and has been with Downstream since June 2013.

> BIGGER HOSS: Texas Motor Speedway’s giant video board, dubbed Big Hoss, is expanding.

Officials at the Fort Worth track, teaming with board manufacturer Panasonic, are attaching a ribbon board spanning 2,071 square feet to the lower portion of the screen. The new portion will display the lap count and running order of cars for NASCAR and IndyCar events.

All told, the expansion of the backstretch board will increase its total viewing area to about 23,000 square feet. By comparison, Charlotte Motor Speedway’s big screen measures 16,000 square feet. Both tracks are Speedway Motorsports Inc. properties.

The project will start after this weekend’s Firestone 600 IndyCar/NASCAR doubleheader weekend and be completed by the AAA Texas NASCAR tripleheader, scheduled for Nov. 3-6.

Don Muret can be reached at dmuret@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @breakground.

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