The teams are confident market research supports the increases, but season-ticket holders say the price they are being asked to pay in the new stadiums — the Mets’ $800 million Citi Field, the $1.3 billion Yankee Stadium and the $1.6 billion (and climbing) Jets-Giants stadium — is turning them into something other than fans. Instead, interviews with two dozen fans indicated, they are starting to feel like unwitting bankers.

“You’re asking me for money and giving me nothing in return,” said Steve Kern, a construction executive from Boonton Township, N.J., who owns two Jets season tickets. “I won’t be sharing in the revenues or get any perks.”

Kern, who organized a small protest outside the Jets-Giants exhibition game Saturday, said he objected to the sale of personal seat licenses, the one-time fees that simply give fans the right to buy season tickets at the new stadium the Jets and Giants will share.

The Giants have said they will charge from $1,000 to $20,000 a seat for their personal seat licenses; once fans buy the seat licenses, they will still have to pay from $85 to $700 a ticket. The Jets are expected to unveil their ticket plan Tuesday.

Fans are now calculating how expensive it will be for many of them to attend games at the new stadiums.

Tickets for the best seats at the 85-year-old Yankee Stadium, which sold for $1,000 a seat this season, will jump at the new ballpark to $2,500; in other areas of the stadium, they will range from $135 to $500 for season tickets. Prices for single-game tickets, which ranged from $14 to $400 this season, will be released later.

The best seats at Citi Field, which cost $276 at Shea Stadium this season, will soar to $495, with other season tickets ranging from $125 to $225 a game. Single-game tickets this season ranged from $5 to $117. (Citi Field’s capacity of about 42,500 compares with 57,333 at Shea.) Neither team has made known all of its prices. Both teams also say broad swaths of more modestly priced tickets will be available.

The Bird’s Nest stadium will become home to Beijing’s Guoan Football Club and double as an entertainment complex for concerts. State-run investment group CITIC will reduce seating from 91,000 to 80,000 and redevelop the surrounding area to include hotels, malls, and restaurants. It’s estimated that the reconstruction will cost 300 million yuan (almost $44 million) and that the annual operating cost of the stadium complex will be about 70 million yuan (about $10.2 million). Seating will also be reduced at the Water Cube, which will become a training and recreation center for swimmers and divers. Plans are underway to add tennis courts, retail outlets, restaurants, and night clubs.

As for some of the less talked-about venues: The fencing hall will be converted into a conference center; the National Indoor Stadium will become a multi-use facility, hosting arts and entertainment events as well as athletic competitions; and athlete accommodations in the Olympic Village are being sold as private residences.

Especially when compared with Beijing’s detailed plans, Athens hasn’t handled the post-Olympics well. The badminton stadium built for the 2004 Games is now a theater, and a government ministry has moved into the media center. But the two main arenas at the Faliro Bay Complex are vacant, there are squatters’ camps in the adjoining fields, and the open-air swimming pool goes unused. Sydney, site of the 2000 Games, has fared a bit better. The National Rugby League holds its grand finale at the main stadium, and other entertainment events take place there as well. Redevelopment of the Olympic Park as a mixed-use residential and commercial site, however, has been slow going. Plans weren’t finalized until 2005, and construction isn’t finished yet.

After hosting the Games in 1996, Atlanta turned its main stadium over to the Atlanta Braves. Georgia Tech manages the aquatic center and houses students in the Olympic Village. The city uses the Centennial Olympic Park for its annual Independence Day fireworks display and for outdoor concerts.

Pictures released by the ODA today also show over 100 columns, each 5m tall, built to provide the support for the podium of the Stadium’s west and south stands.

This also forms the lower ground floor of the West Stand which houses the athletes’ changing rooms, a 60m long call track and other back of house facilities such as doping control and treatment rooms.

ODA chairman John Armitt said: “As the eyes of the world turn from Beijing to London, they will see that real progress is being made to create the new venues and infrastructure for the 2012 Games.
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“As these new images show, the Olympic Stadium is already beginning to rise out of the ground and over the coming months, we will begin to see the size and scale of this flagship venue. There is still a long way to go and we are not complacent about the challenges ahead, but we have made a strong start out of the blocks.”

The Blue Square Premier outfit’s chairman Malcolm Curtis told BBC Radio Solent: “This stadium here is as rotten as a pear.

“It is completely unsustainable and is only used 23 afternoons a year and that cannot be right as a modern facility.”

He added: “We need to have a facility that embraces the community seven days a week, every hour of the day and that’s what I believe this [new] stadium delivers on.”

Staging a variety of events at Lucas Oil Stadium will be crucial for the Capital Improvement Board which needs to generate money to pay the venue’s operating costs.

CIB won’t get to keep revenue from Indianapolis Colts games, and it must give the team about half the revenue from other events.

When state officials tapped Dallas-based HKS Inc. as architect for Lucas Oil Stadium, they charged the firm with building it for three main users: the Colts, NCAA basketball tournaments and conventions.

In a deal that helped pave the way for public financing of the new stadium, the NCAA four years ago promised Indianapolis an NCAA men’s Final Four every five years through 2039.

“It truly is an extremely flexible venue,” HKS Associate Principal Mark Williams said.

For example, not only are seats retractable—allowing more seats to be rolled out for an NCAA Final Four—the rolled-out seats can be adjusted vertically to create a site line custom-designed for basketball viewing.

So far, Lucas Oil Stadium already has lined up a variety of events for 2009, from concerts to trade shows to sporting events. The city has 161 event days planned, though some are unconfirmed reservations, according to the ICVA.

Inside, you’re immediately nailed by the sheer power of vast, enclosed space. It’s 295 feet from playing field to roof peak, 846 feet from one end zone window to the other. We get an instinctive rush when we confront such a vast indoor space, because we’re seeing that our not-so-humble species has the power to create worlds. Architecture moves us when it suggests that we’ve surpassed our old limitations, whether in imagination or technology.

The most dynamic architectural detail inside is the structure itself — the exposed bones of the four steel “superframes” at the corners that support the arched roof trusses. Their complexity is a thing of beauty in itself, and the fact that it’s not only exposed but so close at hand — you can nuzzle right up to the beefy I-beams as you walk through the top concourses — is a way of humanizing the vastness. We feel more comfortable when we can see how something’s put together.

Everton believe that the proposed move to a new 50,000-capacity stadium is essential if the club are serious about wanting to compete with the elite of English football, not to mention the attraction it would hold for would-be investors.

Only yesterday Bill Kenwright, the chairman, said that he was searching for a billionaire investor who could help to catapult the club into the top four. “We are disappointed by the decision,” a club statement read. “It is important to stress that this decision does not spell the end of the Destination Kirkby project but it will precipitate a period of reflection, assessment and re-evaluation.”

Thirty-two people were injured, nine seriously, when a bolt of lightning struck a rain-soaked stadium in the west of Germany where amateur footballers were training, police said Saturday.

Three of those electrocuted had to be taken by helicopter to specialist clinics after the incident Friday evening in which lightning zapped a lighting pylon at the sports venue in the town of Wald-Michelbach, south of Frankfurt.

“Orlando Stadium represents a change in the Soweto skyline,” Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo said yesterday at a progress inspection of the stadium.

The gem of Orlando was quickly progressing towards completion, with contractors assuring the stadium would easily make its November deadline.

By the time the Orlando Stadium hosts the Confederations Cup in 2009, the old lady will celebrate her 50th anniversary.