Movistar Arena (Bogotá)
Movistar Arena, previously known as Coliseo Cubierto El Campín, is an indoor sporting arena located in Bogotá, Colombia. It was built in 1973 and renovated in 2018. The arena capacity is up to 14,000 people and it hosts around 90 shows per year.. Telefónica's cell phone division Movistar bought the arena's naming rights, changing its name in March 2018 for the next 20 years.
Tennis matches
Notable tennis players that have played at the arena include:- Andre Agassi vs. Pete Sampras
- Anna Kournikova
- Karolína Plíšková
- Ashley Harkleroad
- Rafael Nadal vs. Novak Djokovic
- Roger Federer vs. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
History
As El Campín Coliseum
The estate on top of which the arena and neighboring buildings are built was donated to the city by Leonilde Matiz de Camacho and Luis Camacho Matiz, wife and son of Nemesio Camacho respectively, on 9 December 1937.In 2011, following 16 years of lease to the private sector, the coliseum came back to the hands of the city government. On 19 January 2011, the District Institute of Recreation and Sports was informed in Bogotá City Council that the stage required reinforcement and technical improvements that required the IDRD to reduce the coliseum's capacity, thus recommending the city government the demolition of the stage, all for the construction of new installations for the city.
Faced with the possibility of demolition, some citizens opposed it, manifesting that the building had an important architectonic and historic value for the city. Due to these circumstances, the city government contracted a series of technical and feasibility studies that would help take a decision.
Renovation
On 14 January 2015 the IDRD and the Mayor of Bogota announced the "coliseum" would be renewed completely over the following two years. It would be a multi-event arena named Arena Sponsor Bogota which will have all the amenities needed be able to accommodate more elaborate events..The upgrade expanded the arena's yearly capacity to more than one million spectators every year, as the new facilities allowed for quicker turnaround times, enabling it to host more than 90 events annually.
The renovation works themselves started in 2018. While the administration of the stadium was still in the hands of the IDRD, its operation was put in the hands of the Colombian branch of Spain's Telefónica though a 20 year-long public-private alliance starting in 2018.