Stadium: Encyclopedia - Stadium

Stadium

A modern stadium (plural stadiums, Latin plural stadia) is a place, or venue, for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts or other events, consisting of a field or stage partly or completely surrounded by a structure designed to allow spectators to stand or sit and view the event.

Stadium - History of the stadium

The word originates from the Greek "stadion" (στάδιον), literally a (place where people) stand. The oldest known stadium is the one in Olympia, in western Peloponnese, Greece, where the Olympic Games of antiquity were held since 776 BC. Initially the Games consisted of a single event, a sprint along the length of the stadium. Therefore the length of the Olympia stadium was more or less standardized as a measure of distance (approximately 190 meters). The practice of standardizing footrace tracks to a length of 180-200 meters was followed by the Romans as well. Interestingly enough, a human's capacity to sustain maximum speed is known to diminish after about 200 meters of sprinting, a fact also seen in modern-day athletics. Greek and Roman stadia have been found in numerous ancient cities, perhaps the most famous being the Colosseum or the Stadium of Domitian, both in Rome.

Stadium - The modern stadium

Stadium - Types

Domed stadiums have roofs. They are called stadiums because they are large enough for, and designed for what are generally considered to be outdoor sports. (Those designed for what are usually indoor sports are called arenas.) Some stadiums have partial roofs, and a few have even been designed to have moveable fields.

An all-seater stadium has seats for all spectators. Other stadiums are designed so that all or some spectators stand to view the event.

The term "stadium" tends to be used mostly in connection with games like American football and football. An exception is the basketball arena at Duke University, which is called Cameron Indoor Stadium.

The term "stadium" is also often used for baseball parks, especially since the construction of Yankee Stadium in 1923, but starting in the 1990s the cozier term "ballpark" has returned to favor for baseball-only facilities.

Stadium - Design issues

Different sports require fields of different size and shape. Some stadiums are designed primarily for a single sport while other stadiums can accommodate different sports. Stadiums built specifically for some form of football are quite common. The most common multiple use design combines a football pitch with a running track, a combination which generally works fairly well, although certain compromises must be made. The major drawback is that the stands are necessarily set back a good distance from the pitch, especially at the ends of the pitch. In the case of some smaller stadiums, there aren't stands at the ends. When there are stands all the way around, the stadium takes on an oval shape. When one end is open, the stadium has a horseshoe shape. All three configurations (open, oval and horseshoe) are common, especially in the case of American college football stadiums.

In the United States, where baseball and American football are the two most popular outdoor spectator sports, a number of football/baseball multi-use stadiums were built, especially during the 1960s, and some of them were successful. However, since the requirements for baseball and football are significantly different, the trend beginning with Kansas City in 1972-1973, and accelerating in the 1990s, has been toward the construction of single-purpose stadiums. In several cases a football stadium has been constructed adjacent to a baseball park. In many cases, earlier baseball stadiums were constructed to fit into a particular land area or city block. This resulted in asymmetrical dimensions for many baseball fields. Yankee Stadium, for example, was built on a triangular city block in The Bronx, New York City. This resulted in a large left field dimension but a small right field dimension, which added to the stadium's character. Before more modern football stadiums were built in the United States, many baseball parks, including Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park, Tiger Stadium, Fenway Park, Griffith Stadium, Milwaukee County Stadium, Shibe Park, Forbes Field and Sportsman's Park were used by the National Football League or the American Football League.

The spectator areas of a stadium are often referred to as terraces, especially in the United Kingdom but also in some American baseball parks, as an alternative to the term tier. Originally set out for standing room only, they are now usually equipped with seating. Either way, the term originates from the step-like rows which resemble agricultural terraces.

Related, but not precisely the same, is the use of terrace to describe a sloping portion of the outfield in a baseball park, possibly but not necessarily for seating, but for practical or decorative purposes. The most famous of these was at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Poor stadium design has contributed to disasters such as the Hillsborough disaster and the Heysel Stadium disaster.

Stadium - Corporate naming

In recent decades, the owners of sports stadiums in the United States found it worthwhile to subsidize costs by accepting corporate sponsorships. This trend, which began in the 1970s but accelerated greatly in the 1990s, has led to sponsors' names being affixed to both established stadiums and new ones. In some cases, the corporate name replaces (with varying degrees of success) the name by which the venue has been known for many years -- examples include San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, previously known as Jack Murphy Stadium. But many of the more recently-built ballparks, such as Milwaukee's Miller Park, have never been known by a non-corporate name. The sponsorship phenomenon has since spread worldwide.

One consequence of corporate naming has been an increase in stadium name changes, for example when the namesake corporation changes its name, or if the naming agreement simply expires. Phoenix's Chase Field, for example, was previously known as Bank One Ballpark but was re-named to reflect the takeover of the latter corporation. San Francisco's historic Candlestick Park was renamed as 3Com Park for several years, but the name was dropped when the sponsorship agreement expired, and it was another two years before a new name of Monster Park was applied. On the other hand, Los Angeles' now-defunct Great Western Forum, one of the earliest examples of corporate re-naming, retained its name for many years, even after the namesake bank no longer existed. Perhaps the most interesting example is Houston's Minute Maid Park, which hurriedly dropped its original name of Enron Field when scandal engulfed the latter corporation -- it became Astros Field for a year before finding a new corporate naming sponsor.

This new trend in corporate naming (or re-naming) is distinguishable from names of some older parks such as Crosley Field, Wrigley Field and Busch Stadium, in that the parks were named by and for the club's owner, which also happened to be the names of companies owned by those clubowners.

See also: Naming rights

See also

• List of stadiums
• List of indoor arenas
• Strahov Stadium (largest stadium in the world)
• Telstra Dome (largest indoor stadium in the world(by playing surface))
• List of football stadiums by capacity

Categories: Sporting venues | Stadiums

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Stadium", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki