Diversion Amusements Case Study: Hitting the Bullseye on a Moving Target
“Making dreams come true,” sounds like a good thing, but real dreams are slippery. One moment you’re flying over your hometown football stadium, the next you’re sitting down to take an exam for a class you forgot you’d enrolled in. Circumstances shift beneath your feet without warning, new ideas fly in from all directions, and you find yourself constantly scrambling to keep up. Bringing a client’s dream for a new business to life can feel just the same, especially when the whole world goes into quarantine mid-project. With a consultative design approach, flexible thinking, and trusted partners, though, an experienced integrator can stay in command of the process, and create an end result that exceeds their client’s wildest imagining.
The owners of Diversion Amusements in Las Vegas Nevada came to Steve Gomes and Jentry Nix of Adobe Communications Electronics with a warehouse space in the shadow of the new Raiders stadium and an ambitious dream in mind: create a tailgating experience that was so epic, football fans would rather be there than at the game.
In Adobe Communications, Diversion Amusements found exactly the partner they needed. Founded by Steve’s father over 40 years ago, Adobe Communications has been providing a full range of low-voltage telecommunications design and integration services to the Las Vegas community for generations. Their offerings run the gamut from residential entertainment systems to CCTV systems for Vegas’ burgeoning cannabis industry, to running underground fiber for the city itself. Founded before the dawn of the Internet, Adobe Communications now creates network infrastructure for higher education and military clients. This business has evolved alongside one of the most rapidly changing (and technologically enthusiastic) cities in the world – and the Adobe Communications team needed every bit of that that broad expertise, flexibility, and passion for this project.
“We went through a lot of different project versions,” says Jentry Nix, business development manager for Adobe. “There was a year and a half of ideation prior to execution. We spent a lot of time walking the space with the owner, figuring out out which ideas were wishes, and which were needs.”
When a facility is competing with one of the NFL’s newest stadia, the AV needs can be fairly intense. Adobe Communications’s mandate was to create an immersive experience, supported by a premium system: sweeping, large-scale video; audio that would let customers feel the roar of the crowd in their bones; motorized lighting effects synced to the video stream to celebrate every score. They also had a lot of ground to cover: a massive warehouse space became the central event space, and office spaces were converted a VR lounge, a pinball museum, and green rooms for visiting talent.
All told, Adobe Communications needed to create eight independently operable AV zones. The client had originally hoped to create large-scale video using edge-blended projection, but frequent building vibrations made that solution, untenable. Instead, Gomes guided them to a 16 X1 6 video wall built with Vi3 3.9mm surface-mount LED panels, fronted by a stage and flown line array speakers. There were also an additional direct view 45 displays mounted throughout the space, as well as Bose EdgeMax in-ceiling speakers. Diversion Amusements was designed to be a place where you felt and saw the action everywhere you turned.
As the design came together, COVID hit, and the dream changed. There were no massive tailgate parties in the Fall of 2020. To succeed, Diversion Amusements had to become more than a football tailgating venue – so, with the help of Gomes, Nix, and the team at Adobe communications, it did. They reimagined the space as a flexible venue that could host parties, concerts, and corporate events in addition to game-day celebrations. When hockey playoffs arrived alongside the vaccine in 2021, the venue also returned to its roots as a tailgate destination. All of these new use cases brought in new requirements for the Adobe Communications team.
Now that Diversion Amusements was opening its doors to private events, guests needed to be able to send their own content to the 16 X 16 video wall. Some of the venue’s 45 smaller direct view displays were mounted lower down so that guests could bring in gaming systems – their game below, and the Big Game up high. Diversion Amusements also extended AV to their outdoor patio, allowing for socially distanced, open-air gatherings.
Adobe Communications chose Vanco’s EVO-IP as the video distribution backbone of this complex system. The EVO-IP HDMI over IP system allows AV signal distribution and device control for hundreds of devices over a local area network. Using an EVO-IP video Matrix and EVO-IP receivers, Adobe Communications was able to create a system that can transform Diversion Amusements into whatever kind of space it needs to be today: game day hub, corporate event center, party venue, or eSports arena.
“We needed products we could trust, and that the manufacturer would support. We have great, local support with the EVO-IP Product line,” says Nix. “They were supportive throughout the process, walking us through any questions and resolving issues quickly.”
The end result is indeed a dream come true. “I love how versatile this space is,” says Nix. “I was initiated as a football tailgating venue, but it’s so much more than that now. You can feel the sound, and the video wall is quite impressive. You truly do end up immersed. The technology is the anchor of the facility.”