David Beckham and Jorge Mas have released new images of their now-$966 million proposed Inter Miami stadium — the one in Miami, not the temporary one in Fort Lauderdale that’s already under construction — and they have upped their game. Not in terms of the design, which is essentially the same as the video of still images they tweeted out in April, but in that this is now a full-video animation with walking entourage and waving flags and 3D clouds and everything!
All the zooms and quick cuts mean we need to do a lot of freeze-framing to actually see what’s going on, so:
While it is undeniably cool that these soccer fans (?) actually appear to walk as the camera pans past, it remains slightly creepy that they are unearthly beings with ghostly white skin. Also they appear to be lit by the sun just starting to rise in the east, which is an odd time to go for a stroll in south Florida, while wearing jackets, but I guess if you’re going to prevent your deathly pallor from getting tanned, you need to make some lifestyle adjustments.
If you look carefully (it’s somewhat clearer in the video), the flags being held by fans appear to be attached to giant poles of some kind on their left, and waving freely on their right sides. Needless to say, this is not how flags work at actual soccer stadiums, but maybe Beckham and Mas are spending $966 million so they can introduce some radical new air circulation system that will make this possible. Try not to buy seats under the moving end of the flags, or risk being battered by blowing fabric!
Here we see some soccer players on the pitch … warming up? That guy at center-right is clearly kicking at something, though no ball is visible, and with a high leg kick like that he’s going to send his pass 30 yards past his teammate (wearing a different colored kit?) standing right next to him. Also, the near goal appears to have been removed for repairs.
Anyway, it’s all very dazzling, as is that $966 million price tag, which is for the entire stadium-plus-hotels-and-other-stuff complex, and comes with no explanation of what will be spent on what. The Miami Herald editorial board wasn’t too distracted to note that there are still a lot of questions left about what Inter Miami’s lease with the city will actually look like, though it didn’t really specify the questions, and noted that the city commission could soon have an unbeatable four-fifths majority in favor of the stadium deal. So maybe just sitting back and laughing at the pretty pictures is the right move after all.
Oh Joy!. Not enough money was wasted with Marlins Stadium. Make sure that we sink almost another billion dollars so that owners can enjoy their palaces. Not long ago there were ballparks, get this, that were built to enjoy the game that was being played. You didn’t need party decks, fun zones, wifi, 100 food choices or so on. People at one time actually enjoyed going to stadium to sit in their seats and watch the game,
Beckham and Mas are the ones spending almost a billion dollars, not Miami taxpayers. Though there’s still questions about whether they’ll pay full market value for the land, this can’t possibly end up as bad a deal as the Marlins stadium, if only because that was world-historically bad.
Where did all those fans come from? I thought this was a Miami team. It must be an EDM festival at the park not a soccer game.