Multi-purpose stadium

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.

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.

The other larger national stadium, Croke Park, hosts three different sports regularly: gaelic football, hurling, and its women's equivalent, camogie.

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.

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.

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.

For example, Calgary's open-air McMahon Stadium dates from 1960 and has been used only for Canadian football,and later was chosen to host the 1988 Winter Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, and an outdoor ice hockey event (the 2011 Heritage Classic).

This allowed the football field to be squared within the bleachers, but left the baseball configuration with many undesirable views farther away from home plate or facing away from the diamond, such as at the Kingdome, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, and the venue now known as Hard Rock Stadium.

For stadiums such as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the Los Angeles Dodgers played their home games from 1958 through 1961 while awaiting completion of Dodger Stadium, this also had the undesirable effect of having unusually short foul lines, making it easier to hit so-called "Chinese home runs".

In the case of Ireland, grounds built for Gaelic games are physically capable of hosting association football and the rugby codes without changing the seating configuration.

Because the Gaelic games' pitch is rectangular and also longer and wider than that for football or either rugby code, the only changes required are the physical goals and field markings.

However, opposition to those sports within large parts of the Gaelic games community, most notably manifested in GAA Rule 42, means that football and rugby clubs have generally had to play on separate grounds.

[13] The delle Alpi's design was criticized for leaving spectators exposed to the elements, and for the long distance between the stands and the pitch resulting in poor visibility.

This was because the athletics track, which was seldom used, was constructed around the outside of the pitch, while views from the lower tier were also restricted due to the positioning of advertising boards.

The old Estádio da Luz was demolished so that a football-specific replacement could be built on the site as part of Portugal's bid to host Euro 2004.

German stadiums such as the AWD-Arena, Commerzbank-Arena, MHPArena, RheinEnergieStadion, AOL Arena, and Zentralstadion also underwent reconstruction/renovation to remove the running track an thus become football-only venues.

Both the Super Arena (used mainly for basketball, volleyball, mixed martial arts, and professional wrestling events) and Paris La Défense Arena (home of rugby union's Racing 92) feature movable seating blocks that allow each facility to serve as an appropriately sized venue for either field or court sports.

Most early installations of artificial turf such as the original AstroTurf was nothing more than carpet on top of concrete with little padding, material that was easy to apply and remove.

During the first month of the football season, the playing field included the baseball infield soil that is harder than the grass and is also a significant injury risk.

Contrary to the above trend of teams moving away from suburbs, the Atlanta Braves left Turner Field for SunTrust Park.

Lang Park in Brisbane is currently (as of 2020) the only purpose-built rectangle stadium in Australia (with fixed seating) with a capacity exceeding 50,000.

It ultimately served as a temporary home to the Toronto Blue Jays of MLB in 2020 and 2021, when they were displaced by the COVID-19 pandemic after the government of Canada denied them permission to play at Rogers Centre.

The widespread adoption of FieldTurf, and similar modern artificial turfs beginning in the early 2000s, also has had a role in the decline of the multipurpose stadium.

Modern artificial turf requires a more permanent installation, including a sand and rubber base or infill that is not easily removed, and thus does not lend itself well to multipurpose stadiums.

The Blue Jays presently do not have any plans to leave Rogers Centre and have renovated it to make it baseball-specific; the Argonauts had proposed renovating BMO Field so they could share it with Toronto FC in 2016, and the Bills ended their sharing agreement with the Rogers Centre and returned to playing all of its games in Buffalo after the 2013 season.

The Montreal Expos' owners often cited the inadequacy of Olympic Stadium as a reason for the team's financial troubles, which eventually led to their relocation to Washington, D.C.

In soccer, the original Montreal Impact built the smaller Saputo Stadium, which was expanded to accommodate the team's 2012 entry into MLS.

Tropicana Field, being an indoor stadium, hosted the Tampa Bay Lightning ice hockey team for a time.