Anheuser-Busch Inc. sued Major League Baseball, claiming that baseball’s licensing arm reneged on a multiyear renewal of the company’s beer-sponsorship rights and demanded “exponentially higher” fees.

The brewer has accused the league of reneging on a deal signed in April by asking for far more money to continue its more than 30-year association.

It said the league had demanded an “exponentially higher” fee than that agreed.

It wants the league to honour the April agreement and be prevented from negotiating with rival beer companies.

Anheuser called the agreement “clear, unambiguous, binding and more than fair”.

It argued that the league had changed its position after Anheuser also became official beer sponsor of the National Football League in May.

“Anheuser-Busch has spent decades, and millions of dollars, building the reputation and goodwill of Budweiser and the other Anheuser-Busch brands with these fans,” the lawsuit said. “Their loss would be unquantifiable.”

The baseball league said it had a “different view” than Anheuser.

The National Hockey League (NHL) has unveiled a new partnership with ticketing provider PrimeSport.

PrimeSport will be designated the Official Fan Travel and Hospitality Package Partner of the NHL. As part of the partnership, cheap PrimeSport has official hospitality and travel packages for 2015 NHL Events now available for purchase.

“We are excited to announce our new partnership with PrimeSport as they are the leader in providing safe and dependable packages for some of the largest sporting events worldwide,” said Don Renzulli, NHL Executive Vice President of Events. “Through our new partnership with PrimeSport, we are confident they will provide our incredible fans with safe and reliable travel packages throughout the 2014-15 season.”

As part of the partnership, PrimeSport will be offering official VIP ticket packages to certain NHL Events, including the 2015 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic, 2015 Coors Light NHL Stadium Series, 2015 NHL All-Star Weekend and 2015 NHL Awards. PrimeSport’s Official fan travel packages include a game ticket and may include exclusive access to pre-event hospitality, hotel accommodations, transportation, an official souvenir and more.

“We are excited for our new partnership with the NHL and providing hockey fans with the PrimeSport experience throughout the 2014-15 season,” says Sam Soni, President at PrimeSport. “Whether traveling as a fan or corporately, we are working to build a strong reputation with the NHL as a dependable source for premium VIP experiences and look forward to delivering the best experience possible to hockey fans this year.”

Bundesliga champions FC Bayern Munich have signed a partnership with soccer retailer Sports Endeavors who will manage their online store.

“Our U.S. online retail partnership with Sports Endeavors is in response to our rapidly increasing fan base in North America,” says Jörg Wacker, board member for Internationalisation & Strategy, FC Bayern Munich. “We want to supply those fans with the best that Bayern Munich has to offer in a quick and efficient manner.”

“Sports Endeavors helps bring on field successes of worldwide soccer clubs to the retail arena by delivering fans top notch products,” says Doug Williams, Business Development Director, Sports Endeavors.

“More than 1 million fans receive our monthly catalogue and over 60,000 products are sold through our websites. We’re proud to support Bayern Munich’s new online retail store as it continues to expand its footprint in North America.”

While the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics dominated our news and sports pages in February/March, perhaps not so remarked upon was the intriguing ‘plastic’ cladding that completed covered the newly built 40,000 seat Fisht Olympic stadium, host of the Sochi  opening and closing ceremonies.  

This ‘plastic’ cladding, ETFE, is one of the exciting new materials of the last few decades. My colleague, engineer and architect, Ron Van Sluijs explains more about this versatile roof cladding system which was initially used in green houses but is now an increasingly common feature of stadia and large atria. 

When you look at the Sochi stadium’s roof cladding for the first time, it is easy to believe the roof is clad with a series of ‘arched panels’, acrylic perhaps, with open gaps leaving the tier below vulnerable to the rain. However nothing could be further from the truth! The impression of arched ‘panels’ is an illusion, created by alternating clear and opaque ETFE sheets welded together to one long inflated cushion from ridge to gutter.

Creative use of the material has allowed a clever balance of light ingress, shading and architectural interest within the application of a single material.

ETFE – Ethyl-Tetra-Fluor-Ethylen- to give it its full name- is a weather resistant thermoplastic, which is UV stable with a high light and UV transmittance. Although ETFE, a polymer, can be installed as a single sheet foil in a similar technique as tension fabrics PTFE and PVC, ETFE is more often used as a double sheet pneumatically inflated cushion system. The system is comprised of  two or more thin foils sealed around its perimeter, internally inflated to form an enclosed cushion which is then inherently rigid, lightweight, capable of spanning large distances without immediate supports and also capable of bearing substantial loads, as well as being self-cleaning to a degree. 

Cushions of 5-6m wide and 25 up to 125m lengths can be inflated and kept under constant air pressure. On top of the foil, flexible Photovoltaic cells (PV) can be integrated. Furthermore, these cushions weigh less than 1% of a glazed equivalent roof structure. The cushions are both strong and elastic at the same time, characteristics that count when designing large free span roofs and facades. It’s a constant battle in roof design to keep the roof light yet robust, span the distance without the steel clutter, easy and quick to install and all within a certain budget. Though ETFE is expensive per square meter, the savings are considerable, because less steel structure is needed and installation time is much faster. 

The first large scale commercial application of pneumatic ETFE was the 6000m² roof enclosure over the desert hall of Burger’s Zoo in Arnhem, in the Netherlands. 30 years later the facility is still operating with no deterioration to the ETFE material. 

Sochi’s Olympic stadium is Populous’ third major stadium where ETFE has been successfully applied in the last five years. The other venues were stadia constructed for the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand – Eden Park Stadium in Auckland and Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin, the world’s first fully fixed roofed stadium with natural indoor grown grass. 

The high light and UV transmittance of ETFE has allowed grass to successfully grow in a fully enclosed ETFE shell. Initially, no one was clear whether the growing conditions inside an ETFE venue would be good enough  for proper grass growth. A team of turf experts, engineers and the stadium architects undertook rigorous studies over two years to understand the effects of growing grass under ETFE all year round, and an ETFE test rig was built on site in Dunedin to monitor grass growth both under the rig and outside it. In the end, for a climatic location as cold and exposed as Dunedin, it emerged that the new roof meant the indoor growing conditions could be far better controlled than an adjacent outdoor location, and, in fact, led to healthier and stronger growing grass.

The term ‘fantastic-plastic’ comes to mind when working with ETFE. The material is versatile and can look spectacular, particularly when used as a roof over a large venue. The material is interesting architecturally, structurally, thermally, ecologically and is likely to be used more and more as a roof cladding option in the future. As a roof engineer and architect, I believe there is also a future for ETFE in public buildings where it can be applied in combination with newer trends such as green-wall-architecture, or as part of an internal atrium, enclosing a semi indoor-outdoor public space while positively adding to the climatic conditioning of the particular space.

Richard Breslin is a Senior Principal at Populous and a Director of the Asian/Pacific office headquartered in Brisbane. Richard also sits on the worldwide strategic Board of Populous. Richard is responsible for all of the firm’s projects in New Zealand and Australia.

Richard is currently leading the Populous team on the Darling Harbour Live project in Sydney in a HASSELL+ Populous joint venture. The $750M project includes the design of a convention centre, exhibition centre and theatre. He is also Director in charge of the redevelopment of Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne.

In 1997, Richard commenced work with the team on the design of Stadium Australia (now ANZ Stadium), the main venue for the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games. At this time, he also worked on the event overlay for the Games before moving to London where he worked on the design of the 90,000 seat Wembley Stadium, and the design of the Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. He was also project leader for Populous’ successful master plan for the London 2012 Olympic Park.

In 2007, Richard immigrated to New Zealand, where he led the teams on Eden Park redevelopment in Auckland and Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin; – both were venues for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. 

Richard’s 

Ron is an Associate Principal of Populous and a member of the Australasian Management Team. He was born in the Netherlands and worked as an Architect in Europe before immigrating to Australia in 2002. 

Ron’s background is in Architectural Engineering and he has specific skills in structural aspects of architecture, including the building envelope, structural design and analysis and detailing skills. 

Throughout his architectural career, Ron has managed the architectural development and documentation of a variety of large scale buildings including sports stadia, arenas, airport terminals, subway stations and a number of office blocks. 

Ron is the Project Architect for the Philippine Arena in Manila, the world’s largest arena, and  the Taipei Dome  – a baseball stadium which forms part of a large commercial mixed use development in Taiwan. He was also Project Architect for the innovative Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Ron’s 

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