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Indy Eleven limiting first home game to season ticket holders
The team is set to host all 16 of its regular-season home games at IUPUI’s Michael A. Carroll Stadium this season after playing the past three seasons at Lucas Oil Stadium.
The team is set to host all 16 of its regular-season home games at IUPUI’s Michael A. Carroll Stadium this season after playing the past three seasons at Lucas Oil Stadium.
The teardown of the 770-space structure began in March and is expected to be completed sometime this summer, followed immediately by the start of construction on the new 1.5-acre plaza space.
Officials on Tuesday also released attendance figures for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament’s 66 games—all played in Indiana.
By enjoying an unbroken winning streak of mayoral leadership, Indianapolis has made boldness, well…boring.
Interest in tickets to Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games in Indianapolis is generally outpacing the demand for tickets to earlier rounds. Tickets for Hinkle Fieldhouse games are seeing the strongest demand.
The figures, obtained by IBJ on Wednesday, show an average attendance of 2,180 people per game across the seven basketball courts at six venues. All venues limited crowd sizes because of the pandemic.
The seed numbers of the 16 remaining teams add up to 94, the highest total since the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament expanded in 1985. Here’s how that stacks up against some previous years.
Even with most of the seats empty, the roar of fans could be heard outside Hinkle Fieldhouse on Friday afternoon as Virginia Tech hit a three-pointer in the final seconds to send the game into overtime.
“Hoosiers” made Hinkle Fieldhouse famous by Hollywood standards, but in the college basketball world, the home court for Butler University basketball was already a star.
Lucas Oil Stadium, which will host the Final Four along with games over the first and second weeks, will hold 6,900 fans on one court and 8,500 on the other. That’s 22% of capacity, which is the largest capacity of any of the six arenas.
The Indiana House on Thursday voted 83-6 to approve Senate Bill 385, which adds two years to a 2019 bill that had called for a new special tax district—known as a professional sports development area, or PSDA—to be established in Marion County by mid-2022.
Experts say attending events like the NCAA basketball tourney is relatively safe because of how big arenas with high ceilings work to move and mix air—as long as capacity limits allow for physical distancing and masks are still worn properly.
Six of the arenas that helped create Indiana’s basketball legacy will go on full display when the NCAA Tournament tips off later this week.
Teams must undergo a quarantine and testing period when they arrive in Indianapolis—and no one from the schools was allowed to make the trip without seven consecutive days of negative tests.
Most of the games will be played at a handful of venues in Indianapolis, while remaining games will be played in West Lafayette and Bloomington.
The agency, which operates the Indiana Convention Center, Lucas Oil Stadium, Bankers Life Fieldhouse and Victory Field, was hit hard by the pandemic, with annual revenue off more than 50% from the previous year.
The team’s return to the IUPUI campus follows challenges in scheduling weekend games at Lucas Oil Stadium, which already has a busy slate of conventions and other sporting events throughout the year—including Indianapolis Colts home games.
Plans for a grand, glass-wrapped entry pavilion as part of the $360 million renovation to Bankers Life Fieldhouse have been tabled, in favor of minimal updates that largely keep the existing facade intact.
The NFL is set to kick off its 2020 season Thursday night in Kansas City, where 16,000 fans are expected. But it will sound as if 76,416 spectators are cheering thanks to NFL Films, which is supplying prerecorded audio specific to each NFL venue.
NBA and NFL teams will face a considerable financial hit if they are forced to play with no fans in the stands, but, thanks to their lucrative TV contracts, it won’t knock them into the red.