8-622: Magness Arena is a multi-purpose collegiate sports arena in Denver , Colorado . It was built from 1997 to 1999 as part of the Daniel L. Ritchie Center , the sports complex at the University of Denver . It is home to the Denver Pioneers ice hockey team and secondary home to the basketball teams. It replaces the former University of Denver Arena which was razed in 1997 to make way for
16-403: A facility is typically called a stadium . The use of one term over the other has mostly to do with the type of event. Football (be it association , rugby , gridiron , Australian rules , or Gaelic ) is typically played in a stadium, while basketball , volleyball , handball , and ice hockey are typically played in an arena, although many of the larger arenas hold more spectators than do
24-476: Is also the sport of indoor American football (one variant of which is explicitly known as arena football), a variant of the outdoor game that is designed for the usual smaller playing surface of most arenas; variants of other traditionally outdoor sports, including box lacrosse as well as futsal and indoor soccer , also exist. The term "arena" is also used loosely to refer to any event or type of event which either literally or metaphorically takes place in such
32-543: Is that the event space is the lowest point, allowing maximum visibility. Arenas are usually designed to accommodate a multitude of spectators. The word derives from Latin harena , a particularly fine-grained sand that covered the floor of ancient arenas such as the Colosseum in Rome , Italy, to absorb blood. The term arena is sometimes used as a synonym for a very large venue such as Pasadena's Rose Bowl , but such
40-554: The Ritchie Center. Magness Arena opened September 1999, one month before the Pepsi Center . The arena was voted, "Best New Sports Venue" by Westword in 2000. The arena is named after cable television pioneer Bob Magness , who donated $ 10 million towards construction costs. It features padded individual seating, two members-only club seating areas, a four-sided video scoreboard, and a concourse with glassed-in views of
48-504: The adjoining Hamilton Gymnasium and El Pomar Natatorium. The arena can be identified around the city by the attached 215-foot-tall (66 m), gold-spired Williams Tower, which contains a 65-bell carillon . The largest hockey crowd in arena history was a game between Denver and Colorado College on March 9, 2024, with an attendance of 7,033. The largest non-hockey event in the arena was a 2008 presidential campaign rally for Barack Obama, where about 10,000 people attended. Magness Arena hosted
56-412: The first of three 2012 U.S. Presidential Debates on October 3, 2012. Arena An arena is a large enclosed platform, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theatre , musical performances , and/or sporting events . It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectators, and may be covered by a roof. The key feature of an arena
64-541: The stadiums of smaller colleges or high schools. There are exceptions. The home of the Duke University men's and women's basketball teams would qualify as an arena, but the facility is called Cameron Indoor Stadium . Domed stadiums, which, like arenas, are enclosed but have the larger playing surfaces and seating capacities found in stadiums, are generally not referred to as arenas in North America. There
#304695