Quote:
Originally Posted by grstex
Go through the exercise of getting an 800-team FRC championship under one roof, find that one best location, and ask why it was not considered.
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I'll give some help with that...
Fields: 800 teams might be doable with the current 8 fields. Barely. Let's use that as a baseline for size on the playing field. Incidentally, that means we'll need a football field, covered, or similarly-sized venue, just for the fields.
Pits... at 10x10 for each team, that's 80K square feet without any aisles (which will obviously add quite a bit of space--call it 120K with the aisles as a conservative number). Plus 4 basketball courts for the practice fields, plus about 400 square feet for Pit Admin. Say a good-sized convention center.
"Add-ons" like Spare Parts, HoF, Scholarship Row, Supplier Showcase, and the Conference will also need space. Plus space will be needed for the volunteer lounge, judging rooms, and VIP areas.
Seating: Many a team brings a skeleton crew. But more bring full teams. If we figure 50 people/team, that means the minimum seating is 40K seats. Not counting VIPs and judges and all, of course (they'll need a hundred or so, at best guess).
Now, any one or two of those conditions isn't all that hard to meet. Football stadiums, any college or NFL town will have at least one, and they'll probably all be able to handle 40K seats if the college is at a high enough level. (Or a baseball stadium, though you'd need to make sure that the home team was on the road that week. Soccer might be even better; the field is a smidge larger than a football field as I recall.) Convention centers, even more places have those that could probably handle the entirety of the pits and other similar space, maybe even fields (though seating could be problematic for fields). If tents are allowed, even more areas could be in the running.
But... you also have to deal with travel and lodging. Many a team will use a bus, but more will need to fly. This means an airport that can handle international flights (connections at another airport are OK too, but ). And don't forget about 15K hotel rooms for those 40K team members and the volunteers. A lot of major cities can deal with that; most can handle the traffic.
Now, the really tricky parts: The whole thing has to be covered throughout the event, and the field area and the pit area have to be pretty close together. And transport to the airport and hotels needs to be manageable.
And that's just for FRC.
Atlanta did a pretty good job--if FIRST were still there, I'm pretty sure they'd be able to pull off an 800-team event under those conditions. But the Georgia Dome might not be available much longer. (GWCC might still be an option.) St. Louis is rather cramped. I'm not aware of anything of that nature out here on the West Coast--maybe Seattle has something but I doubt it. I've heard rumors of Anaheim but that might be stretching it quite a bit. (We've got good weather out here, so very few stadiums even have a roof--you'd be getting a convention center.) I've heard Indianapolis floated a few times as a possible site, but I haven't been anywhere near the proposed venue so I don't know anything.