Conseco Fieldhouse

Conseco Fieldhouse

Location	125 S. Pennsylvania St, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 46204
Coordinates	39°45′50″N 86°9′20″W / 39.76389°N 86.15556°W / 39.76389; -86.15556Coordinates: 39°45′50″N 86°9′20″W / 39.76389°N 86.15556°W / 39.76389; -86.15556
Broke ground	July 22, 1997
Opened	November 6, 1999
Owner	Capital Improvement Board, City of Indianapolis, Indiana
Operator	Pacers Sports & Entertainment
Construction cost	$ 183 million USD
Architect	Ellerbe Becket Architects & Engineers
Capacity	Basketball: 18,345 Ice hockey / Arena football: 14,400
Tenants
Indiana Pacers (NBA) (1999-Present) Indiana Fever (WNBA) (2000-Present) Indiana Firebirds (AFL) (2001–2004)

Conseco Fieldhouse is a sports arena in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. 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.

Conseco Fieldhouse replaced Market Square Arena as the home of the Indiana Pacers on November 6, 1999.

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 four Big Ten Conference men's basketball tournaments (2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008) and it will host the tournament for five straight years starting in 2008 after it won the Big Ten bid over Chicago and the United Center.

Conseco Fieldhouse hosted two pay-per-view events for WWE, The Great American Bash on July 23, 2006 and twenty-first edition of SummerSlam on August 17,2008.

In the summer of 2008, Daktronics installed see-through shot clocks replacing the outgoing units.^{[citation needed]}

Awards & Recognitions

This section contains weasel words, vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed. (November 2008)

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 fieldhouses, which are considered some of the best places to see a basketball game, that covered the state of Indiana with very busy 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 174,000 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 11, 2004 set a record for the largest attendance at a U.S. Swimming event outside of the Olympics with 11,488 people.

Gallery

Main entrance

Interior during a Pacers game

Conseco Fieldhouse lobby

External links

• Official site
• The Ultimate Sports Road Trip profile