Teams In The Wrong Stadium

[Graham_Clayton]

An interesting example of teams playing at the "wrong" stadium occurred when the rebel World Series Cricket (WSC) competition was launched in Australia for the 1977-78 season.

 

The cricket "establishment" banned any WSC matches from being played at any of the established cricket grounds in the country, such as the Sydney Cricket Ground, Melbourne Cricket Ground, Adelaide Oval, the WACA ground in Perth and the 'Gabba in Brisbane.

 

As a result, WSC had to find alternate venues, which they did:

 

VFL Park, Melbourne - used primarily for Australian rules football
Football Park, Adelaide - also used for Australian rules football
Gloucester Park, Perth - horse trotting track - games played on infield

Sydney Showground - speedway track - games played on infield

These venues were only used again for the 1978-79 season, after which World Series Cricket ended.

 

[CJR]

The Flint Firebirds had to play their penultimate home game of the season in Saginaw when the ice plant in Flint broke down.  The announcement was made just hours before the game and hardly anyone was there.  The Flint crew ran most of the in-arena stuff but on their one power play, the scoreboard graphic was Saginaw's power play package.

 

[rxmc89]

Tonight and tomorrow the Kings play the final Frozen Fury in Las Vegas against the Stars and Avalanche at T-Mobile Arena.  They'll be the home team in an arena in which starting next year they'll be the enemy.

[KDubK414]

This year, the Admirals playing hockey at UWM Panther Arena. After playing at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. 

[Michael Bolton]

Atlanta United will be playing the first few months of their inaugural season at Georgia Tech's Bobby Dodd Stadium while Mercedez-Benz Stadium is being completed.

[msubulldog]

On 8/25/2015 at 0:26 PM, dfwabel said:

 

1985: SMU hosts Texas at Texas Stadium

 

Texas Stadium, was the home field for SMU from 1979 until they got hit with the "Death Penalty" in 1987

 

[Silent Wind of Doom]

On 4/19/2016 at 0:55 PM, MC Buffalo said:

It seems odd that a New York franchise would have such difficulty getting funding and/or private investments for a new Arena right near their old one. If cities in small markets can make it work how did "The Lighthouse Project" at the location of the current Nassau Coliseum fall apart?

I'm not tuned into that whole situation, but it seems like the owner, Wang, really has tried hard to get an arena near the old one.

 

ESPN could do another 30 for 30 on the never ending battle to get a new Arena for the Islanders as a follow up to the John Spano ownership one. Which is one of the more entertaining in what has been a great series of documentaries.

 

Long Island past Brooklyn and Queens is not part of New York City, and therefore has it's own separate local government.  Long Island has one of the highest tax rates in the country, and therefore ANYTHING proposed that will raise taxes is immediately rejected by the population.  A publically-funded arena is an impossibility in their original location.  Hence every project for revitalizing failing.

[tp49]

50 minutes ago, Silent Wind of Doom said:

 

Long Island past Brooklyn and Queens is not part of New York City, and therefore has it's own separate local government.  Long Island has one of the highest tax rates in the country, and therefore ANYTHING proposed that will raise taxes is immediately rejected by the population.  A publically-funded arena is an impossibility in their original location.  Hence every project for revitalizing failing.

I've written semi-extensively on these boards about why The Lighthouse failed so I'm not going to do that again.  Suffice it to say that a publically funded arena in Nassau County was very possible.  However, Charles Wang made a number of errors which ended up with no new building and the Isles in Brooklyn key among them was his failure to understand how to properly navigate the local governments in Nassau County.

[RedfieldNick]

This happened, Kansas State had to play their spring game in Sporting Park because of the Vanier Football Complex was still being built a couple years ago.

[Pauly]

On 10/8/2016 at 9:01 AM, KDubK414 said:

This year, the Admirals playing hockey at UWM Panther Arena. After playing at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. 

Respectfully I would have to disagree as UWM Panther arena seems more to the Admirals liking and in this case smaller means better at least for the AHL.

[kimball]

The Jazz played 11 home games in Las Vegas in the early '80s. Including the game where Kareem broke Wilt's scoring record.

 

 

[Dabbaby17]

the most memorable example of this occurring was the Oklahoma City Hornets after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. (not sure if this one has been done already, but I thought I'd contribute anyway.)

The city truly embraced the team, even though they had a mediocre 77-87 record.

 

[BlackBolt3]

RELEVANT CONTENT: The 2006 Sugar Bowl was played in Atlanta due to Hurricane Katrina.

[DoubleStraps]

This is probably buried somewhere in this thread, but maybe this will come as news to somebody other than me: this weekend I was watching this clip of an old Cam Neely fight from 1993:

 

 

This clip seemed really strange to me, because the game is clearly not at the Boston Garden or the Spectrum. But the game took place in the middle of the season, so it wasn't a pre-season game or anything. It turns out that for the 1993-94 NHL season, there were 26 neutral site games, and the game that this clip is from was one of them (at the Target Center in Minneapolis). Apparently these games served as test games for future league expansion. I have no recollection of this at all! Anyways, here's a link to the full list of games, with locations and attendance figures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993–94_NHL_season#Neutral_site_games

 

Man, some of those games were very poorly attended. It's pretty understandable, though. How many people in Minneapolis are going to trudge out to a late-season match-up between Winnipeg and Ottawa?

[kimball]

3 hours ago, DoubleStraps said:

This is probably buried somewhere in this thread, but maybe this will come as news to somebody other than me: this weekend I was watching this clip of an old Cam Neely fight from 1993:

 

 

This clip seemed really strange to me, because the game is clearly not at the Boston Garden or the Spectrum. But the game took place in the middle of the season, so it wasn't a pre-season game or anything. It turns out that for the 1993-94 NHL season, there were 26 neutral site games, and the game that this clip is from was one of them (at the Target Center in Minneapolis). Apparently these games served as test games for future league expansion. I have no recollection of this at all! Anyways, here's a link to the full list of games, with locations and attendance figures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993–94_NHL_season#Neutral_site_games

 

Man, some of those games were very poorly attended. It's pretty understandable, though. How many people in Minneapolis are going to trudge out to a late-season match-up between Winnipeg and Ottawa?

 

Well, seemed like a test for Winnipeg to move to Minneapolis -- which would have happened if the Target Center could have been profitable with the T'Wolves and a NHL team.

 

Two other things of notes on this ...

1) They did neutral site games in 1992-93 as well.

2) The Dallas Stars played a game in the Target Center their first year in Dallas. Talk about awkward.

[tohasbo]

On 1/3/2017 at 0:45 PM, DoubleStraps said:

This is probably buried somewhere in this thread, but maybe this will come as news to somebody other than me: this weekend I was watching this clip of an old Cam Neely fight from 1993:

 

 

This clip seemed really strange to me, because the game is clearly not at the Boston Garden or the Spectrum. But the game took place in the middle of the season, so it wasn't a pre-season game or anything. It turns out that for the 1993-94 NHL season, there were 26 neutral site games, and the game that this clip is from was one of them (at the Target Center in Minneapolis). Apparently these games served as test games for future league expansion. I have no recollection of this at all! Anyways, here's a link to the full list of games, with locations and attendance figures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993–94_NHL_season#Neutral_site_games

 

Man, some of those games were very poorly attended. It's pretty understandable, though. How many people in Minneapolis are going to trudge out to a late-season match-up between Winnipeg and Ottawa?

Not sure if it was already mentioned but the NHL also did this in the 1992-93 season as well.

[SilverBullet1929]

On Monday, January 02, 2017 at 11:14 PM, Dabbaby17 said:

the most memorable example of this occurring was the Oklahoma City Hornets after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. (not sure if this one has been done already, but I thought I'd contribute anyway.)

The city truly embraced the team, even though they had a mediocre 77-87 record.

 

The team actually changed their city name because of temporary relocation due to Katrina? Is that what happened? I'm no NBA expert so I'm really not sure. 

[kimball]

2 minutes ago, SilverBullet1929 said:

The team actually changed their city name because of temporary relocation due to Katrina? Is that what happened? I'm no NBA expert so I'm really not sure. 

Sorta?

They were known in the standings as the New Orleans-Oklahoma City Hornets, but that was about it.

[SilverBullet1929]

1 minute ago, kimball said:

Sorta?

They were known in the standings as the New Orleans-Oklahoma City Hornets, but that was about it.

But the actually changed their jerseys to say Oklahoma city for the season? That's amazing. Hell of a commitment from both the city and the team there. In a way it's a slap to New Orleans to not still represent that city on the jersey after what they went through but I'm impressed that a temporary move like that was so boldly done. 

[dont care]

23 minutes ago, SilverBullet1929 said:

But the actually changed their jerseys to say Oklahoma city for the season? That's amazing. Hell of a commitment from both the city and the team there. In a way it's a slap to New Orleans to not still represent that city on the jersey after what they went through but I'm impressed that a temporary move like that was so boldly done. 

it was more to show appreciation to OKC for embracing them and allowing them to play there.