The Minnesota Vikings will pay $1.2 million to get bigger and better video screens in the stadium being built in downtown Minneapolis.
The video board at the west end of the field was going to be 88 feet by 50 feet. Now the board will be 120 feet by 68 feet. The enlargement will cost the team nearly $600,000. That change nearly doubles the size of the board — from 4,400 square feet to 8,160.
The team also will put "rear projection video walls" into the "Fire and Ice Club" premium spaces. Those will cost $632,000.
The additional money technically increases the cost of the project, but the stadium still comes in at just under $1 billion.
Because the changes involved more than $500,000 the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority was asked to sign off, which it did at a regularly scheduled meeting Friday.
The team is portraying the change as an increase in its contribution.
In other news, the Vikings reported having sold 70 percent of its season ticket space in the TCF Bank Stadium for the upcoming season. The Vikings will play at the Gophers' stadium for the next two seasons.
The new stadium is expected to open in July 2016 for the Vikings.
