Different North American cities take different approaches to stadium and arena siting. To me, it says a lot about how cities view community events and the importance of urban environments as people places. Who does it well, and who does it poorly?
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Resources:
– https://www.cryptoarena.com/events
– ttps://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2019/12/15/21020536/las-vegas-raiders-oakland-explained-relocation
– https://www.npr.org/2023/04/21/1171046613/oakland-athletics-las-vegas
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Images
– NBA highlights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rU41U8M5Q0
– Oakland Coliseum By Mother's Cookies – "1984 Mother's Cookies Oakland Athletics Trading Cards – Checklist". Mother's Cookies Trading Cards. 1984., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37648844
– NFL map By © Sémhur / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3191281
– MLB map By Michael J at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29012535
– NBA map By Azure1233 – Vector map from North America second level political division 2.svg by Alex Covarrubias.Information and colours from NBA Conferences Divisions.PNG by Astrokey44.Combined by Lokal_Profil, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99683658
– NHL Map By Uncleben85 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107619420
– MLS map By User:RandyFitz – File:Major League Soccer club locations 2022.png, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125602749
– CFL map By Pharos04 at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by TFCforever., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7722181
– Climate Pledge Arena By Sea Cow – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118920955
– Seattle Center Coliseum construction By Seattle Municipal Archives – Flickr: World's Fair Coliseum under construction, 1961, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20584707
– KeyArena By Cliff from Arlington, Virginia, USA – KeyArenaUploaded by Dolovis, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31022414
https://wowa.ca/vancouver-housing-market
– Salt Lake temple By Farragutful – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79238225
– New Orleans Bourbon Street By bellemarematt – https://500px.com/photo/80993857/bourbon-street-by-bellemarematt (500px.com result list for cc-by-sa sorted photos), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98577412
– BB&T Arena for thumbnail By Yanjipy – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70939416
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Thanks!
Arenas in the middle of nowhere are the best. You get in and out quickly. I have zero interest is spending more money at overpriced restaurants after the game.
Pittsburgh not being mentioned has to be a mistake, it’s easily top 3
As someone from the DMV, it's great to see DC is high up on your list!
You should look at Columbus. They have an Arena District downtown. The NHL Blue Jackets, MLS Crew (new stadium), and Minor League Clippers all have stadiums there. There aren’t big ugly parking lots and the area is very nice and walkable.
Fun fact about BMO field in Toronto: The parking lot is used in the fall for the Canadian National Exhibition, which is a large state fair style event
I saw Carin Leon at the San Diego Sports Arena. Presented by Sycuan Casino ©
Football and soccer aren’t usually good co-tenants. And hockey and basketball don’t work together as well as you might think. It’s more efficient, of course, but the fan experience is worse.
Nobody likes FedEx Field. It will be replaced, but probably by a stadium in the NoVa sprawl.
I guess Pittsburgh not having NBA or MLS teams kept it from qualifying for this list, but all of those stadiums are incredibly accessible for pedestrians and in great locations in the city. PNC Park is just a gem
Living in Philadelphia. I love the fact that the sports complexes are segregated from the rest of the city. Center city has enough to do. Not having to deal with traffic on games days living less than two miles from the stadiums is amazing. Only people in the suburbs who don’t have live next to stadiums and can look at them on google maps want downtown arenas.
Was that a scene of Las Vegas with the Eiffel Tower in the opening montage? The knights not win until a week ago.
Bank of American Stadium does not sit on prime city real estate. It sits on a corner between the belt loop and the busy train yard. No company wants to be next to the train yard, before the stadium it was just power stations and parking garages, and most of them still line the train yard. In fact the stadium is older then most of the high rises in the area. The stadium is one of the older buildings in most of uptown and is the 7th oldest NFL stadium. 4th oldest MLS stadiums and hold the MLS attendance record.
I was surprised not to see Pittsburgh or Cincinnati on the list
The Washington Bullets changed their nickname to Wizards in 1997. Also, Climate. Also, the Climate Pledge Arena started playing NHL games in Oct. 2021.
What about Pittsburgh?!?
Definitely biased but feel like it would compete well with Seattle / DC for top 3
PNC is the best view in the MLB
Acrisure is conveniently right next door and both of them are just next to downtown and right on the metro Line (that not extending north of the city is admittedly terrible)
Finally there is PPG which is also a nice centralized location to downtown and there is a new project to inject some life into the area immediately surrounding it
Gillette has the worst parking and street access situation of any stadium I've been to.
Very surprised not to see Pittsburgh here. Acrisure, PNC Park, and the penguins stadium are all off major rail routes and walkable from downtown.
The two most glaring omissions imo are New Orleans and Indianapolis. New Orleans not being on this list is shocking. It's the absolute best place on earth to visit as a sports fan. The Superdome is basically smack dab in the middle of the city. Numerous gigantic hotels in stumbling distance to the Superdome and Arena. If you stay at somebody house there's streetcar lines that all end at the Superdome. If you're coming in from out of town, you get off the interstate and they let you park ANYWHERE! Indy blew my mind for the same reason, seeing UGA win the natty there, I discovered that even tho it is a bit chilly you walk thru a dozen or so blocks of restaurants and bars from hotel to stadium.
My guy just knocked philly and san fran. Then proceeds to put Washington dc at number 3. All knowledge and respect lost because that's downright dumb
2:50 just….sad. But at least I got to attend one game there. #SNU
Y U no luv Cleveland?
The baseball park and the basketball/hockey arena are colocated downtown and are adjacent to both a transit hub (Tower City – with a pedestrian tunnel to the venues) and NO parking moat. The football stadium is a walkable distance from Tower City/Public Sq. and actually connected by a light rail extension. The Cavs arena used to be (like Gillette Stadium) halfway between Cle and AKR (like BOS and PRO) but was brought back downtown a few decades ago.
How did you rate Pittsburgh?
I'm not a huge Detroit fan, but Little Ceasars acoustics are fabulous for music shows as well.
Two interesting things about Boston, from a Bostonian:
1. TD Garden is right above North Station which connects most of the North Shore directly to the arena through the commuter rail. It's perhaps the most accessible arena in the NBA and NHL because of that.
2. Gillette Stadium, while in the weirdest location, actually has a shopping area around the stadium, which gives it a little bit more of a purpose outside of football season. It's still in a horrible location, but the shopping mall and movie theater connected to it makes it a little less horrible.
A couple mentions here if San Francisco is going to be disqualified, Washington and New York should be immediately disqualified to. You’re disqualified San Francisco because Levi stadium is so far away. Fedex field is 35 minutes away from DC. And New York, Giants and Jets play in another state called New Jersey. It’s hard to do San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. Basically one big Metroplex with different city names. We are unlike any other region in the world. So if you’re going to do one of our sports teams, you have to do all of our sports teams in compass as one
Loving your stuff. I can tell you an old time NBA fan. You happened to mention the arena in Washington wear the Capitals and the,…Bullets play. Whoa! That’s a long time ago! Keep up the good work.
cool.
Orlando City SC Legend Tesho Akindele #VamosOrlando #NeverHuntAlone
This dude is delusional. The Philly sports complex is the best setup in the country.
I dream of the day where the commanders move back to RFK and people stop getting shot in gallery place directly in front of capital one arena
No Pittsburgh? Probably the best city for sports from a purely urbanist perspective
The "BULLETS" haven't existed for decades 14:59
Suprsied you didnt mention dfw, i literally live in the burb/city that hubs all the stadiums. At&t is big, the new baseball stadium is small and short, the e sports stadium looks like a small convention center
I'm a DC girl, but Audi Field has literally killed people. The Advisory Neighborhood Commission opposed putting an arena on Buzzards Point unless it could be guaranteed that the Nats weren't playing at the same time as the teams share parking facilities. They promised it would never happen. They then opened the park during the All-Star game, claimed they didn't make the schedule and so couldn't keep their promise.
A man in a public housing project nearby (we're talking two blocks from the stadium) had a heart attack. The fire house is less than half a mile away, but the traffic was so bad it took them over 20 minutes to get to him. It wasn't just that the traffic was so heavy, because Buzzards Point is a penninsula and holds historic Fort Meade, the traffic pattern is tight and can't be expanded. The Mayor's Office didn't care. To her the soccer stadium was more important than the densest urban housing in the District or the people who lived in it.
Curious to know where Dallas was on your list?
I think the SF ding should be reevaluated. In the San Jose are the 49s, the Sharks, and Earthquakes.
How does Pittsburgh not make this list? All three venues are within a short walk of downtown.
A future fun sport themed video would be ranking Olympics by substantially/urbanism. How dense the event is, how existing/temporary venues are used, the transportation options in the city. I suppose Tokyo would actually be the most sustainable of the last 50 years considering the lack of air travel those games needed. Paris and LA are doing some interesting things to try to reduce the externalities of the games.
NYCFC actually shares with THREE venues: Yankee Stadium, CitiField (Mets), and Red Bull Arena (Harrison, NJ). However, NYC recently announced plans to build a Soccer specific stadium, in Queens, near CitiField, for NYCFC
Soccer teams NEED soccer specific stadia! It's ridiculous to have 15K soccer crowds in a Football stadium built to hold 75K! You also encounter the additional issue of most football stadia have artificial turf fields, whereas soccer must be played on grass. A huge issue in 1994, when the US hosted the World Cup, and an issue the US will encounter again in 2026. For example, in 1994, for the World Cup games held at turf Stadia – like Giants Stadium – temporary grass platforms were constructed, and were wheeled into and out of the stadium for World Cup Games.
That last point is crucial! For example, Giants' Stadium (East Rutherford, NJ) was build in swampland. The groundskeepers had plenty of space, outside of the stadium to store the platforms and grow & maintain grass. You simply can't do that with inner city stadia!
Another thing you are COMPLETELY FORGETTING is that a large percentage of the fan base for sports teams live OUTSIDE of cities!! For example, most Giants fans live in New Jersey, Connecticut, or Westchester County, NY. Makes no sense to have the stadium in NYC – when the commute into NYC is a disaster! Oh, and you mention the Prudential Center in Newark. How many NJ Devils fans actually live in Newark? 0.001%? If you check attendance records, the Devils drew MORE fans when they played at the Meadowlands Arena (East Rutherford, NJ) than they draw in Newark!
Inner city stadia are generally BAD for sports.
How can you talk about Montreal, and give it such a high rating, yet completely ignore the absolute financial disaster that is Olympic Stadium? Very disingenuous.
I'll just call the ones that had whole neighborhoods bulldozed for parking bad.
My favourite dumb relocation name is the NHL’s Calgary Flames, who are named after a fire that burned down the city of Atlanta
Where is the basketball arena in the middle of nowhere?
Idk how big a soccer person you are, but football and futbol don’t always make the best stadium mates. Stadium like Lumen in Seattle we’re designed to do both, and attendance justifies it, but many NFL stadiums put fans way further away from the field than any soccer stadium ever would. It can result in a dead energy, the death nell of soccer. It’s why the MLS now requires teams to either have soccer specific stadiums, or the NFL stadium to have been designated to host soccer as well, for any new team entering the league.
Vancouver Canada is set up about as good as it gets. The football stadium and NHL arena are close together in the downtown peninsula region. One rapid transit line has a Stadium stop, and another transit line has a stop close enough for an easy walk. And no huge surface parking lots here. The football stadium is lit up at night with colour controlled LED lighting.
Enclosed stadiums tend to do good business in trade shows so easy access is essential.