Multi-purpose stadium
A multi-purpose stadium is a type of stadium designed to be easily used for multiple types of events. While any stadium could potentially host more than one type of sport or event, this concept usually refers to a design philosophy that stresses multifunctionality over speciality. It is used most commonly in Canada and the United States, where the two most popular outdoor team sports—Canadian football or American football and baseball—require radically different facilities. Football uses a rectangular field, while baseball is played on a diamond with a large outfield. Since Canadian football fields are larger than American ones, the design specifications for Canadian facilities are somewhat less demanding. The particular design to accommodate both is usually an oval, although some later designs use an octorad. While building stadiums in this manner allows sports teams and governments to share costs, it also presents some challenges.
In North America, multipurpose stadiums were primarily built during the 1960s and 1970s as shared home stadiums for Major League Baseball and National Football League or Canadian Football League teams. Some stadiums were renovated to allow multipurpose configurations during the 1980s. This type of stadium is associated with an era of suburbanization, in which many sports teams followed their fans out of large cities into areas with cheaper, more plentiful land. They were usually built near highways and had large parking lots, but were rarely connected to public transit. As multipurpose stadiums were rarely ideal for both sports usually housed in them, they had fallen out of favor by the 1990s, with the SkyDome that opened in 1989 being the last such stadium completed to accommodate baseball and football. With the completion of the Truman Sports Complex in Kansas City in 1973, a model for purpose-built stadiums was laid down. Since the Baltimore Orioles left the multi-purpose Memorial Stadium for the baseball-only Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1992, most major league sports stadiums have been built specifically for one sport. However, some newer NFL stadiums have been built with consideration for the possible use of the stadium for Major League Soccer or international soccer, which has similar field dimensions to American football. Fields that are suitable for soccer are almost always equally suitable for either rugby code, and the 2031 Men's Rugby World Cup is expected to employ the same stadiums as the NFL and MLS.
Outside North America, the term is rarely used, since association football is the only major outdoor team sport in many countries; in many other countries, association football and rugby can easily coexist with limited venue conversion required beyond goalpost changes and line markings. In Australia, many sports grounds are suited to both Australian rules football and cricket, as Australian Rules fields and laws are laid out on cricket ovals. In some cases, such as at Stadium Australia in Sydney, Docklands Stadium in Melbourne, and National Stadium, in Singapore, stadiums are designed to be converted between the oval configuration for cricket and Australian rules football and a rectangular configuration for rugby and association football, and in the case of Singapore's National Stadium, an athletics configuration as well. Association football stadiums have historically served as track and field arenas, too, and some still do, whereas a newer generation frequently has no running track, in order to allow the fans closer to the field. This has created some difficulties with creating large athletics venues for major championships, as fans are less willing to accept the compromises required in the design of such stadiums, an issue that has bedevilled, e.g. the London Stadium since the 2012 Summer Olympics and was avoided in the commonwealth Games stadiums of 2000 and 2014 by returning the stadiums to football-only use, and in 2022 by having the national athletics body as the sole primary tenant of a renovated stadium.
Winter sports facilities, especially speed skating rinks, can be multi-purpose stadiums. Very often, a rink or two of approximately 61 by 30 meters—the regulation size of an IIHF ice hockey rink—are placed inside the oval. Sometimes the ice surface is even larger, allowing for both bandy and curling.
In Ireland, the first of two national stadiums, Aviva Stadium, is shared by football and rugby union, although only rugby union has a club team, Leinster Rugby, that regularly uses the facility. The other larger national stadium, Croke Park, hosts three different sports regularly: gaelic football, hurling, and its women's equivalent, camogie. All three are gaelic games run by the same organisation, the Gaelic Athletic Association, and the rules of each game are mapped onto the same dimensionsalthough some pitches in areas where hurling is the dominant code have longer pitches slightly more suited to faster, longer passes in the hurling game. When the Aviva was being rebuilt, Croke Park stepped in as home for the national teams in both soccer and rugby union, a decision of significant political weight in the nation's history. Gaelic grounds can easily accommodate both as the typical Gaelic pitch, while similarly rectangular, is significantly longer and wider than the fields used for soccer and rugby union, which are almost identical in dimensions. Historically, however, the GAA has been reluctant to allow 'foreign' sports to use its facilities, although these objections were set aside both for the rebuild of the Aviva and for the ultimately unsuccessful 2023 Rugby World Cup bid. Croke Park and Aviva have both occasionally hosted visiting American football college matches, especially those featuring the Army and Navy, or Notre Dame, with which Ireland has a long-standing connection.
North America
United States
Several stadiums hosted multiple sports teams before the advent of multi-purpose stadiums.In New York City, the Polo Grounds hosted football teams early on, as its rectangular nature lent itself well to football and was also used for baseball. The original Yankee Stadium was designed to accommodate football, as well as track and field, in addition to its primary use for baseball.
In addition to baseball, Fenway Park and Braves Field would host college football and several professional football teams. Wrigley Field, while originally built for baseball, also hosted the Chicago Bears, Comiskey Park hosted the Chicago Cardinals, and Tiger Stadium hosted the Detroit Lions. Later venues such as Cleveland Stadium, Milwaukee County Stadium and Baltimore Memorial Stadium were all built to accommodate both baseball and football.
In 1920s New England, outdoor wood-track velodromes such as the East Hartford Velodrome and Providence's Cycledrome could, with some compromises, fit an American football field in their infields: early NFL franchises in each city used the velodromes as their home stadiums.
In the 1960s, multipurpose stadiums began replacing their baseball-only and football-only predecessors, now known as "classics" or "jewel box" parks. The advantage of a multi-purpose stadium is that a singular infrastructure and piece of real estate can support both teams in terms of transportation and playing area, while money that would have been spent to support infrastructure for two stadiums can be spent elsewhere.
Also playing into the advent of the multipurpose stadium was Americans' growing use of automobiles, which required professional sports stadiums surrounded by parking: most cities lacked affordable space for such stadiums near their city centers, so multi-purpose stadiums were typically built farther from the city center with freeway access.
Subsets of the multipurpose stadiums were the so-called "cookie-cutter stadiums" or "concrete donuts" which were all very similar in design. They featured a completely circular or nearly circular design and accommodated both baseball and football by rotating sections of the box seat areas to fit the respective playing fields. These fields often used artificial turf, as it could withstand the reconfiguration process more easily, or be removed for non-sporting events. Furthermore, many of these stadiums were either enclosed domes or located in cold-weather cities and before the development of hybrid grass and improved natural grass cultivation techniques, artificial turf was the best solution at the time.
The first of these "cookie-cutter" or "concrete donut" stadiums was Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1961 ; it was followed during the 1960s and 1970s by Shea Stadium in 1964, Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium and the Astrodome in 1965, Busch Memorial Stadium and Oakland Coliseum in 1966, San Diego Stadium in 1967, Riverfront Stadium and Three Rivers Stadium in 1970, Veterans Stadium in 1971, and the Kingdome in 1976.
Nine of these eleven stadiums have been since demolished, with Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium demolished in 1997, the Kingdome in 2000, Three Rivers Stadium in 2001, Riverfront Stadium in 2002, Veterans Stadium in 2004, Busch Memorial Stadium in 2005, Shea Stadium in 2009, San Diego Stadium in 2021, and RFK Stadium in 2026. Furthermore, the Astrodome has been vacant since 2008 due to its failure to meet current fire and building code requirements. The Oakland Coliseum was the last multi-purpose stadium to remain in continuous dual use until the fall of 2019 with the Athletics and the Raiders sharing the facility. This ended when the Raiders franchise relocated to Las Vegas in 2020. The A's continued to use the Coliseum through the 2024 season. Having announced their own intentions of moving to Las Vegas the previous year, the Athletics vacated Oakland and currently play in Sacramento.
The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome was unusual as one of the few air-supported dome stadiums that was multipurpose in practice, being convertible between football and baseball. Home of the Minnesota Vikings through the 2013 season, it was also home to the Minnesota Twins until 2009 and the Minnesota Golden Gophers football team until 2008 as well as the Minnesota Golden Gophers baseball team until 2012. The Metrodome has been demolished, with U.S. Bank Stadium, built mainly for professional football but able to convert to a college baseball stadium, now sitting on its former site. Most other inflatable domes, such as the Hoosier Dome and Pontiac Silverdome, were football-only stadiums, although both stadiums hosted basketball; the later-RCA Dome hosted the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament many times and hosted the Final Four multiple times while the Silverdome was the home arena for the Detroit Pistons for most of the 1980s. The Carrier Dome was another such air-supported, multipurpose stadium; it was built to accommodate outdoor sports such as football and indoor sports such as basketball. The Carrier Dome, since renamed JMA Wireless Dome, remains in use, although its air-supported roof was replaced by a fixed roof in 2020. Air-supported domes fell out of favor in the 21st century after notable weather-related collapses in Minnesota and Pontiac exposed the drawbacks of air-supported domes in snowy locales.
During the height of the multipurpose stadium construction era of the 1960s and 1970s, three baseball-only stadiums were constructed: Candlestick Park, Dodger Stadium, and Royals Stadium. Anaheim Stadium, although designed primarily for baseball, opened in 1966 with a press box in the upper tier on the third-base line oriented specifically for football, along with space beyond right field for a movable grandstand to accommodate an additional 13,000 fans for a future pro football franchise. This additional grandstand was indeed added to Anaheim Stadium in 1980 to accommodate the Los Angeles Rams' move from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Anaheim Stadium was renovated to a baseball-only facility in 1997, three years after the Rams' departure for St. Louis. Similarly, Candlestick Park was renovated into a multipurpose stadium in 1970 to accommodate the San Francisco 49ers' move from Kezar Stadium and converted to football-only after the San Francisco Giants moved to their new ballpark in 2000. Candlestick Park was demolished in 2015. Another baseball stadium, Denver's Mile High Stadium, was also renovated with additional seating, including a 4,500-ton, three-tier movable grandstand to accommodate both baseball and football configurations. Mile High Stadium was home to the AFL/NFL Denver Broncos and the MLB Colorado Rockies franchises.
For the 1996 Summer Olympics, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games built the temporary Centennial Olympic Stadium in a way that it could be converted to a new baseball stadium, and ACOG paid for the conversion.
Despite being considered controversial at the time, the International Olympic Committee considered the action innovative, due to the fact that there were no local needs for another stadium with a capacity for more than 70.000, given the existence of the Georgia Dome which was completed in 1992. Furthermore, the Atlanta Braves had already been exploring opportunities for a new venue to replace the outdated Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium. The southwest corner of the Olympic Stadium was built to accommodate the future baseball infield and seating. This is observable in aerial views and plans of the stadium in its Olympic configuration, where the temporary seats are not placed next to the oval running track. The southwest part of the stadium also had four tiers of seats, luxury boxes, a facade facing the street, and a roof, whereas the northern half of the stadium used a simpler two-tiered seating configuration. During reconstruction, the athletics track was removed, and the north half of the stadium was demolished, reducing the capacity to 49,000 when it reopened as Turner Field. Because of the former track area, the field of play, particularly foul territory, although not large by historical standards, was larger than most MLB stadiums of its era. After the 2016 season, the Braves moved to the new SunTrust Park, and Georgia State University purchased Turner Field and surrounding parking lots for a major campus expansion project. As part of this project, Turner Field was reconfigured as Center Parc Stadium, a downsized rectangular stadium that is now home to the university's football team.