USA: Record attendance in the NBA after a quarter of a century?

source: Stadiumdb.com; author: Kuba Kowalski

USA: Record attendance in the NBA after a quarter of a century? San Antonio Spurs will celebrate their 50th anniversary in the upcoming 2023. To mark the occasion, the team will move for 1 game to Alamodome, the stadium that used to serve the team. Its capacity could pave the way to breaking the record set in 1998.

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Specifically, in the match between Chicago Bulls and Atlanta Hawks - then 62,046 fans could fit in the stands. The only other NBA game that had a higher attendance was the 2010 NBA All-Star Game, which was played at AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas. The primary reason for such high attendance in 1998 was that this regular season game was the last one played by Michael Jordan in Atlanta as a member of the Chicago Bulls. Like the NBA All-Star Game in 2010, the match there was played in a football stadium - in this case, Georgia Dome.

The Spurs have boasted that 50,000 tickets had already been sold for the fixture against the Golden State Warriors. The match with the NBA champions will be played on January 13. The Spurs are hoping to attract 65,000 (or more) fans to the Alamodome, despite only needing 62,047 to set a record.

stunning shot of alamodome taken from the heght© Katie Haugland

During football matches, the venue can hold 64,000 people. Prior to the Spurs game, Alamodome hosts the Valero Alamo Bowl (29 December) and the All-American Bowl (7 January). To increase its capacity, Alamodome will add seats around the field at ground level. The configuration will be similar to what fans saw at the 2018 Men's NCAA Final Four. During that tournament, the attendance record was 68,000.

There will therefore be four days to transform the football stadium into a basketball arena before January 13. This means not only bringing in and laying out the court, but also adding all the Spurs logos and setting up seats on the floor to accommodate an additional 3,000 fans near the playing area. The operation will not come cheap, but Spurs want to do everything possible to get as many people as possible to the historic game. Tickets for this match are currently still on sale. The cheapest can be purchased for $10.

This will not be the team's first game at the Alamodome. The Spurs played there from 1993 to 2002, including the 1999 season, when they won in the NBA Finals against the New  York Knicks. It's great for us to have them back. The Spurs and the Alamodome bring the local community together - says Patricia Muzquiz Cantor, director of convention and sports facilities. When the team played at the venue, some seats were blocked off by curtains and the arena was configured to accommodate between 22,000 and 35,000 fans. The Spurs have returned to the Alamodome twice since then - in 2003 and 2014, when they hosted fans at their NBA championship rallies.

Alamodome from the insight during the game© Katie Haugland

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