Inside Look at Red Bull Arena

HARRISON, NJ - Red Bull's advertising for its new soccer stadium here centers on the slogan "The Stage Is Set." After a private tour this week of Red Bull Arena, FanHouse can report with relief that there's actually no stage to be found, and that the 25,000-seat venue is far better than advertised.

The slogan brings to mind the cookie-cutter MLS stadiums that feature a gaping, concrete concert stage behind one of the goals--the multi-purpose venues with shallow stands, an ornamental roof and a feel that is anything but "soccer specific."

Red Bull Arena, however, gets everything right. It will be the continent's finest soccer stadium when it opens next month, and should finally launch its star-crossed tenant from irrelevance to tough ticket. The New York area has been waiting for a reason to pay attention to its soccer team. It now has one.

Located within walking distance of the Harrison PATH train station and across the Passaic River from Newark, the stadium is scheduled to open March 20 when the Red Bulls host Pele's former club, Santos. A week later, the Chicago Fire will visit in the MLS opener for both clubs.

There's still work left to do. A few seats are waiting to be installed on the east side, and the furniture in the locker rooms and lounges has yet to be unwrapped and arranged. Signs of construction linger. But the 90-minute tour with Red Bulls VP Andy McGowan made it clear that this is a peerless facility, offering everything that any player, journalist and fan--from the supporters' section to the luxury suites--could hope for.

The photo above is of the stadium's west facade, behind which the locker rooms, suites, lounges and press area all are located. To the west lies the train station and an area of barren land that shortly will be filled with six square blocks of mixed-use development. Offices, condos, retail and restaurants will fill the space seen below, providing a game-day experience far more palatable than the rusted-out, industrial landscape currently surrounding the stadium.

The 120x70 yard Kentucky Bluegrass field has been installed and was under cover during the tour. But a walk to the edge is enough to provide a sense of the atmosphere to be experienced at a match. The seats rise vertically toward the roof, creating that combination of intimacy and tension that all the best stadiums around the world possess. (McGowan said RBA was modeled after SK Austria Karnten's stadium in Klagenfurt).

Every chair in the place is covered, and the roof is low enough to actually hold in the sound unlike many of its MLS counterparts. It's fashioned from a gray, translucent material that will let sunlight through during the day. The distance from the highest row of seats to the sideline is just 192 ft. It's 21 feet from the front row to the sideline and only 27 ft. between the seats behind the goal and the endline. The upper deck is made of aluminum, which should enhance the sound if the Red Bulls wind up scoring a few more goals than they managed in 2009.

Hi-Def video boards (39X22 feet) hang from the roof on over both the north and south goals, and the ribbon video board circles the entire stadium between the upper and lower decks. The building's technology is state-of-the-art and will allow for four completely independent and simultaneous HD broadcasts to be produced during a game.

Red Bull Arena features 30 suites, some seating 17 and some 22. They sell for $65,000-$75,000 per season. FanHouse got a glimpse of the Red Bull corporate suite at midfield, but it was barren save for a few stools and an HD TV sitting in a cardboard box on the floor. Rest assured it won't look like that next month.

The suites run in two rows along the top, and the blue seats above are club seats. Behind them is the lounge and restaurant available to those ticket holders. The concourse stretches all the way around the stadium, giving the rest of us the chance to get to where we need to go while seeing what we may be missing as we walk by.

The gray tables to the right of the club seats are for the press, offering journalists a view and a proximity to the field that tops anything I've seen past the college level. The niche just below will house the team benches, and the space in between leads back under the west stand and toward the locker rooms. The photos below show the view from the press area and then the perspective the Red Bulls and Fire will have as they take the field one month from now, not including the snow or empty seats.

The players' tunnel is anchored by the Red Bulls' locker room at the south end and four more locker rooms at the north end, meaning that the stadium could host a double-header and still ensure that no other club has access to the home team's facilities. Entry into the Red Bulls' sanctum leads first into a large workout room that will give players space to warm up before a game. The equipment isn't installed yet, but McGowan ensured us that the walls are reinforced to prevent any damage from pre-match small-sided pickup. The locker room sits off that workout room.

Here's the players' tunnel, which also includes a large room for press conferences and windows through which fans entering on the west side can watch players walk between the locker room and the field. There also is a lone Red Bull vending machine. Go figure.

And the Red Bulls' locker room, with carpeting yet to come:

The club has set aside the seats behind the south goal for the supporters groups. Below is a shot of that section and the concourse curving around behind it, which at some point will feature two club shops and lots of places to buy beer (65 points of sale and 20 vendor carts, according to the club).