How Staples Center and the Kings Learned to Make Ice from Thin Air

Los Angeles TimesBy Ronald D. White

Executives from Staples Center and the Los Angeles Kings were willing to hear a start-up’s pitch about slicing energy costs and improving the quality of the arena’s ice sheet, which has never enjoyed a great reputation among professional hockey players.

But when they heard they could do all that and more using a machine that pulls water straight from the air, their first reaction was to laugh out loud.

“It sounded crazy, just too good to be true,” Kelly Cheeseman, chief operating officer for the Los Angeles Kings and AEG Sports, said of the idea floated at the meeting two years ago. Cheeseman was sold after a test at the Kings training facility brought “great reactions from the players right away.”

Now, the El Segundo company behind the machine, BluEco Technology Group, has teamed up with the Kings and Staples Center owner-operator AEG Worldwide to sell the devices to hockey arenas and other big facilities.View the story here.