Also probably the most expensive ever too…
We’ve featured some pretty nifty sporting back yards in our time but this is a whole new level of personal sporting luxury.
A crowd called Populous, who built the new Yankee Stadium, Wembley Stadium and London’s Olympic Stadium, are offering private customers a scaled down version for their own private use.
We say scaled down but this will not fit in your gaff if you have a normal semi-d. This personal stadium requires space, lots and lots of space.
The builder’s plan is to install a 40-50 yard playing field, surrounded by 12 to 20 feet high LED screens. Onto these screens they can put any stadium you can think of. They cite Fenway Park and Lambeau but we’d be thinking more Aviva, Croker and maybe Thomond too. The screens can also be hooked up to show TV so you could play while the Sunday Game was on. Sticking your PS4 or Xbox One in would be pretty amazing too.
A professional level sound system will play in whatever crowd noise you like to add to the atmosphere and there will also be seats for about 100 people. Those seats are in what is essentially a luxury box, a box that also comes with a full stadium audio mic, so you can live commentate on your friends and family as they play, and have them hear it over the speakers.
But the best bit is the field, which is made of the FieldTurf, a type used in a lot of NFL games. It is embedded with fibre-optic lighting and comes with a switch which instantly makes the field look like a baseball diamond, an NFL field or soccer pitch or whatever you desire. We’re sure we could program in GAA to it too. They’ll even stick a retractable roof on it, if you fancy it. And over here, we’d probably need it.
No, here’s the bad news. The folks behind it reckon it would take at least a year to build (so this Christmas is out) and the cost would be in the region of $30million, or €22million.
They haven’t built one yet, so these drawings are just ideas, but here’s the link, just in case you win the Lotto.
