Estadio Azteca

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Estadio Azteca is a stadium in Mexico City, Mexico. It is the official home stadium of the Mexico national football team and the Mexican team Club América.

Estadio Azteca was the primary venue for association football at the 1968 Summer Olympics and is the only stadium ever to host two FIFA World Cup final matches, in 1970 and 1986. It also hosted the 1986 quarter-final between Argentina and England in which Diego Maradona scored both the “Hand of God goal” and the “Goal of the Century”. The stadium also hosted the “Game of the Century”, when Italy defeated Germany with scores of 4-3 in extra time. With a capacity of 105,000 (original capacity of 114,600), it is the largest stadium in Mexico and fifth largest in the world.

Events

Estadio Azteca has hosted a variety of international sporting competitions, including:

• 1968 Summer Olympics
• 1970 FIFA World Cup
• 1975 Pan American Games
• 1983 FIFA World Youth Championship
• 1986 FIFA World Cup
• 1999 FIFA Confederations Cup
• On October 2, 2005, the first international regular-season game in the history of the NFL was played in the stadium between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals. The game was a 31–14 victory for the Cardinals and holds the record of the largest crowd to attend a regular season NFL game with 103,467 persons.
• On 20 February 1993 Julio Cesar Chavez fought Greg Haugen in front of 132,247 spectators.

Names

The name “Azteca” is a tribute to the Aztec heritage of Mexico City. The stadium has never been the Olympic Stadium. This role in 1968 was for Estadio Olímpico Universitario. The stadium is now owned by Mexican TV consortium Televisa. In order to avoid people associating the stadium’s name with that of its rival TV Azteca, Televisa officially changed the stadium’s name to Guillermo Cañedo, a top executive, long-time football advocate at Televisa and prominent member of the executive committee of FIFA. The change took place in 1997, following Cañedo’s death on January 20, 1997. However the change did not go well with the general population, who generally refused to refer to the stadium by its formally new name. Following a schism where two of Cañedo’s sons, who worked at Televisa, switched camps and went to TV Azteca, Televisa quietly returned the stadium’s name to its original version. Some people did not even notice, as they usually referred to the stadium as “Azteca” during the name change.

The stadium has been given the nickname of “Coloso de Santa Ursula” which, in English, means “Colossus of Saint Ursula”, due to its large structure. Santa Ursula refers to the part of town where the stadium resides in Mexico City.

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Georgia Dome

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The Georgia Dome is a domed stadium located in Atlanta, Georgia, between downtown to the east and Vine City to the west. It has been the home stadium for the Atlanta Falcons since 1992, and is owned and operated by the State of Georgia as part of the Georgia World Congress Center. Until 1999 upon the opening of the Millennium Dome in London, the Georgia Dome was the largest domed structure in the world.

The Dome is accessible by rail via MARTA’s East-West and Proctor Creek lines, which service the nearby Dome/GWCC/Philips Arena/CNN Center and Vine City stations.

Construction

The Georgia Dome was completed in 1992 at a cost of $214 million (US), which came from the Georgia General Assembly, making it one of the largest state-funded construction projects in state history. It seats 71,228 for football, and can hold approximately: 75,000 for concerts, 53,000 for basketball when the dome is fully open and 40,000 for basketball and gymnastics when the dome is sectioned off (one half closed off by a large curtain). The record for overall attendance at the Georgia Dome is 75,892 for the 2008 SEC Championship Game in football.

The structure is located on 9.19 acres (37,200 m²) of land; the dome has a height of 270.67 feet (82.5 m), a structure length of 744.75 feet (227 m), a structure width of 606.96 feet (185 m), and a total floor area of 102,149.51 ft² (9,490 m²). The dome is the largest cable-supported dome in the world. Its roof is made of teflon-coated fiberglass fabric (which is strong and lightweight) and has an area of 374,584.08 ft² (34,800 m²). From its completion until the December 31, 1999 opening of the 20-acre (81,000 m2) Millennium Dome in London, it was the largest domed structure of any type in the world, but still remains the largest indoor sporting facility in the United States.

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Ford Field

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Ford Field is an indoor football stadium located in Detroit, Michigan that is the current home field of the NFL’s Detroit Lions. It is across the street from Comerica Park. It regularly seats 65,000, though it is expandable up to 70,000 for football and 80,000 for basketball. The naming rights were paid for by Ford at $40 million over 20 years; the Ford family (including Lions owner William Clay Ford, Sr.) holds a controlling interest in the company.

Architecture

Ford Field was originally planned to be an outdoor stadium, simultaneously with Comerica Park, which opened in April 2000, as part of a public project to replace Tiger Stadium and the Pontiac Silverdome. Ford Field was constructed after Comerica Park, opening in 2002. It cost an estimated $430 million to build, financed largely through public money and the sale of the naming rights.

The stadium’s design incorporates a six-story former Hudson’s warehouse, which had stood since the 1920s. Architecturally, the stadium shares a likeness with its sister stadium Ford Center, a multipurpose sports/concert arena located in downtown Oklahoma City. Hammes Company, a real estate development company in Brookfield, Wisconsin, developed the new stadium, as well as the warehouse.

Major events

On April 1, 2007, Ford Field hosted World Wrestling Entertainment’s extravaganza WrestleMania 23. The event set Ford Field a attendance record of 80,103. It was the first WrestleMania held in the Detroit area since 93,173 fans set a world indoor attendance record at the Pontiac Silverdome for WrestleMania III in 1987.

The stadium is also used each fall to host the MCBA finals, where Michigan high school marching bands compete to be the best in the state.

Ford Field hosted Super Bowl XL on February 5, 2006 as the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Seattle Seahawks, 21–10 to win their 5th Super Bowl championship in front of 68,206 in attendance. It also marked the final game in the 13-year career of Detroit native and 10-year Steelers running back, Jerome Bettis.

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