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Originally Posted by Kevin Kolodziej
We're already sacrificing the stadium feel. It seems that most people are still unaware that in the original announcement it clearly says that all matches will be played in the convention centers. The stadiums are only for the opening and closing ceremonies. This is what I wanted to ask about at the town hall meeting but got cut off - I was able to talk to Done Bossi about it afterwards and he said currently only St. Louis and Atlanta are able to handle the current setup of pits in convention center and matches in an attached dome, and Atlanta is about to build a new stadium so its not an option. I specifically asked then how they intend to have 20,000 people watch the Einstein matches in a convention center (because in 2011 the division fields in the convention center were awful and didn't have enough room for their own teams) and he said they are working on a solution to that.
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As much as I love going into the stadium, and getting to walk on the Dome floor Wednesday night in 2013 is one of my favorite memories of all time, loosing this set-up was inevitable.
As Don said, Atlanta and St.Louis are the only two cities with that set up. Atlanta is building a new stadium, and at the rate things are going The Rams will be leaving EJD, even if they do stay in St. Louis. There are other candidates where a Dome and Convention Center sit next to each other (Lucas Oil Stadium as an example) but they lack adequate physical connections between the two buildings that EJD/AC and GD/WCC had.
While the current championship format could have been prolonged, it would have to go away at some point. While having the majority of Champs in a convention center isn't quite as glitz and glam, it can work. As long as Champs is held in large enough exhibition halls, and they get the right people to run champs, they can do some amazing things to mimic the existing experience better then you think.
I hope though, as Steven mentioned, that Einstein is held in the arenas with closing ceremonies. As long as a decent break (2-3 Hours lets say) is scheduled between the end of division finals and Einstein, they could easily get teams and their essential equipment loaded on trucks to ferry them over to the dome/arena. Is it inconvenient for the teams actually competing on Einstein? Yes a little bit. Does it work better off overall for all the teams attending and wanting to watch? Yes.
These changes in terms of how a championship event will run definitely aren't as great as the current set-up, but they have to happen as we move forward.
(To be clear I'm talking about the setups at each Championship event, as for having two Championships, there's no reason for that).