Where Ice Hockey Games Take Place: Top 11 Stadiums Around the World

Ice hockey has the greatest number of fans. Numerous people watch matches on TV,read more about live betting, and go to the games themselves. And these are the 11 stadiums where these games take place. 

O2 Arena

Landed on the outskirts of Prague, the Starship Enterprise is the home arena of hockey club Slavia, called the O2 Arena. The 18,000-seat, glass-clad, gray-paneled complex was built for the 2004 Ice Hockey World Championship by local bureau ATIP.

Lanxess Arena

One of the largest hockey stadiums in Europe, the 20,000-seat Lanxess Arena is located in Cologne. The most memorable element of the complex is the 76-meter (at the highest point) steel arch supporting the roof of the building on cables. Thanks to it, the arena architect Peter Böhm could free the stadium facades from the load-bearing columns and make them panoramic glazing.

Königpalast

The Königpalast ice arena is located in Krefeld, Germany. The eight-thousand capacity stadium made of reinforced concrete is almost entirely covered with frosted glass panels that are illuminated at night for various lighting effects.

Palais des Sports de Grenoble

Some of the buildings from the 1960s continue to delight even architectural aesthetes without major renovations. Opened for the Olympic Games in 1967, the Palais des Sports de Grenoble is an elaborate engineering structure. It's a hyperbolic paraboloid in which the entire weight of the roof is supported by just four anchor points on the corners of the building.

Hartwall Areena

The ice arena being built for the Ice Hockey World Championship 1997 is the Hartwall Areena in Helsinki, Finland. The complex, designed by local architect Harry Harkimo, holds 13,500 spectators for an ice hockey game and up to 15,000 for concert events.

Saitama Super Arena 

The Saitama Super Arena in Saitama is an example of modern Japanese architecture. The gigantic stadium-transformer with a capacity of 37,000 people, created by the efforts of two major design companies (Nikken Sekkei and Ellerbe Becket), is a chaotic pile of intimidating concrete and metal structures.

Torino Palasport Olimpico

Torino Palasport Olimpico in Turin, Italy, is quite the opposite. Rectangular building, faced with glass and stainless steel, proves that even minimalist architecture, devoid of so much loved by our architects "excesses", can look convincing. Curiously enough, it was designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki.

BOK Center

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, there is the BOK Center, which opened in 2008. The city officials decided to make it their architectural icon, and invited Cesar Pelli, a famous American architect of Argentine origin, as the author. He suggested a spiral image of glass and stainless steel for the arena. According to the author, in this building he combined several traditional just for Tulsa architectural motives, inspired by the art of American Indians and art deco in the refraction of fashionable modern architecture.

Oracle Arena

A glass oval with a memorable diamond pattern on the facade is the Oracle Arena in another American city, Oakland. Surprisingly, such a modern-looking building was built in 1967 (arch. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill). In 1997 it was renovated, but the exterior design of the building remained unchanged.

Ericsson Globe

Another ice palace, which has no analogues is Ericsson Globe or Globen, the world's largest building, built in the form of a sphere. Opened in 1989, the dome holds around 14,000 spectators for hockey games or 16,000 people for concert and entertainment events.

Arena Zagreb

Arena Zagreb, a mixed hockey and handball stadium, opened in the Croatian capital in 2008. The facade of the complex is formed by a rhythm of 86 monolithic curved vertical concrete ribs connected by a translucent polycarbonate outer shell, which spectacularly lights up in the evenings. In its maximum, concert format, the building can hold up to 25 thousand people.

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