Conseco Fieldhouse

Conseco Fieldhouse is a sports arena in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is the home of the Indiana Pacers of the National Basketball Association and the Indiana Fever of the Women’s National Basketball Association. The Indiana Ice of the United States Hockey League also use Conseco Fieldhouse as their home arena for a few games a year. Additionally, other entertainment events such as concerts are frequently scheduled there. The name is a result of the naming rights to the venue being sold to Conseco, the financially-troubled financial services organization based in nearby Carmel, Indiana.

Seating Capacity: 18,345
Opened: November 6, 1999
Owner: Capital Improvements Board, City of Indianapolis
Operator: Pacers Sports & Entertainment
Construction cost: $183 million USD
Architect: Ellerbe Becket Architects & Engineers

Conseco Fieldhouse replaced Market Square Arena as the home of the Indiana Pacers on November 6, 1999. It is notible for being the first modern “retro”-styled facility in the NBA.

In 2002, Conseco Fieldhouse served as one of two sites for the FIBA Men’s World Basketball Championship, sharing the honors with RCA Dome.

The venue has hosted three Big Ten Conference men’s basketball tournaments (2002, 2004, and 2006). Conseco Fieldhouse hosted WWE’s The Great American Bash 2006 on July 23, 2006, the first WWE PPV in Indianapolis in nearly 10 years. The last was WWF In Your House: Buried Alive on October 20th, 1996 at the Market Square Arena.

Awards & Recognitions

Conseco Fieldhouse has received widespread acclaim as one of the finest facilities in all of the sports world. It is designed after Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler University and the other great fieldhouses that covered the state of Indiana with standing room only crowds on Friday nights in the formative years of high school basketball. The fieldhouse is a veritable museum to the rich heritage that is Indiana basketball.

In 2005, 2006, and 2007, Conseco Fieldhouse was ranked the No. 1 venue in the NBA according to the Sports Business Journal/Sports Business Daily Reader Survey. In 2006 The Ultimate Sports Road Trip reaffirmed Conseco Fieldhouse as the best venue in all 4 of the major sports leagues. “The Ultimate Sports Road Trip has recently concluded a re-scoring and re-evaluation of all 122 franchises in the four major sports, based on our personal visits to each of the teams in a journey that began in 1998. Based on our criteria, Conseco Fieldhouse has once again withstood scrutiny to be named the “best of the best” in the four major sports. Everything about Conseco Fieldhouse is top notch, a sparkling venue in a sparkling city, said Farrell and Kulyk.”

In October 2004, Conseco Fieldhouse hosted the 2004 FINA Short Course World Swimming Championships. A 25 meter 300,000 gallon competition pool and 175,000 gallon warm-up pool were temporarily installed. A total of 71,659 tickets were sold for the four day event. The crowd on the evening of Saturday, October 11th, 2004 set a record for the largest attendance at a U.S. Swimming event outside of the Olympics with 11,488 people.

Conseco also played host to WCW Sin, a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Championship Wrestling, on January 14, 2001.

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Conseco Fieldhouse website
Conseco Fieldhouse wikipedia entry
Indiana Pacers website
Pacers Digest Fansite
Indiana Fever website

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