After several expansions of its seating capacity, it accommodated 18,168 for basketball and 17,380 for ice hockey, arena football, indoor soccer, and box lacrosse.

Ground was broken on the arena on June 1, 1966, by Jerry Wolman and then-Philadelphia Mayor James Tate as the home of the NHL's expansion Philadelphia Flyers.

[7] The 76ers moved their home games to Convention Hall and to the Palestra, but neither of those arenas had ice rinks at the time, and there were no other NHL-quality sites in the Philadelphia area.

Furthermore, the messageboards on the Spectrum scoreboard were the first dot matrix screens in pro hockey or basketball, capable of photos, animation, and replays as well as messages.

This was replaced in 1986 with ArenaVision, which consisted of six 9-by-12-foot (2.7 by 3.7 m) rear-projection videoscreens at the top and a four-sided American Sign and Indicator scoreboard at the bottom.

[1] Two games in the inaugural Canada Cup hockey tournament were also held at the Spectrum in September of that year, as the U.S. took on Czechoslovakia and the USSR.

The AHL Phantoms also won their first Calder Cup title on Spectrum ice before a sellout crowd of 17,380 on June 10, 1998, by defeating the Saint John Flames, 6–1.

The only visitors to win the Stanley Cup and NBA championship at the Spectrum were the Montreal Canadiens (1976) and the Los Angeles Lakers (1980) respectively.

It is also one of a handful of venues to host the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals at the same time, doing so in 1980 (all four major Philadelphia teams would reach the championship round of their respective sport in 1980).

The 76ers' last game was a 112–92 loss to the Orlando Magic on April 19; on May 12, Eric Lindros scored the arena's final Flyers goal in the 2nd period, and Mike Hough of the Florida Panthers scored the arena's final official NHL goal in the 2nd overtime of Game 5 of the 1996 Eastern Conference semifinals, a 2–1 Flyers loss.

[citation needed] On July 14, 2008, Comcast Spectacor Chairman Ed Snider officially announced that the Spectrum would be shuttered and torn down to make way for Philly Live!, a proposed retail, dining and entertainment hub.

Those honored in the pre-game ceremony were Lou Angotti, Ed Van Impe, Bob Clarke, Mel Bridgman, Bill Barber, Dave Poulin, Ron Sutter, Kevin Dineen, Éric Desjardins, Keith Primeau and Derian Hatcher.

On October 23, 2009, Philadelphia area musicians The Hooters, Todd Rundgren and Hall & Oates headlined a concert titled "Last Call".

With the demolition of The Spectrum, all venues at which The Grateful Dead played through their career within the City of Philadelphia, except for the Irvine Auditorium, have succumbed to the wrecking ball.

The complex's total area expanded with the addition of each new facility and now takes up the entire southeast quadrant of the grounds occupied in 1926 by Philadelphia's Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition, a massive 184-day World's fair built on 700+ acres of until then largely undeveloped city-owned swamp and park land, including League Island Park adjacent to the U.S. Navy Yard bounded by 10th Street, Packer Ave., 23rd Street, and Terminal Avenue.

The Spectrum itself occupied the portion of the Exposition's grounds on the south side of Pattison Avenue between Broad and 11th Streets that in 1926 served as the fair's main trolley terminal operated by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company.

The Spectrum's closest sports complex neighbor was Veterans Stadium (opened 1971, closed 2003, demolished 2004), which was located north of the arena directly across Pattison Avenue.

In 2003 the Eagles moved to Lincoln Financial Field, a purpose-built football/soccer stadium located SE of the Spectrum site directly across 11th Street from the Wells Fargo Center.

The following year, the Phillies relocated to Citizens Bank Park, a dedicated baseball stadium completed in 2004 and located diagonally across from the Spectrum site at the northeast corner of Pattison Ave and Citizens Bank Way (11th St.), immediately east of the former Veterans Stadium site which now serves as a parking lot for the entire complex.

In 2017, the Phillies' spring training complex in Clearwater, Florida was renamed Spectrum Field after Bright House Networks was purchased by Charter Communications.

Although the Spectrum formally closed on October 31, 2009, demolition of the structure did not begin for more than a year with internal work commencing on November 8, 2010.

[47] Two weeks later a public "wrecking ball ceremony" attended by some of the athletes who made the building famous such as Hockey Hall of Famers Bernie Parent and Bob Clarke of the Flyers and Hall of Famer Julius Erving of the 76ers, was held in the adjacent parking lot "H" on November 23, 2010, to formally begin its external demolition.

[48] However, unlike Veterans Stadium, its one-time neighbor, which had been located immediately across Pattison Avenue from the Spectrum before it was imploded on March 21, 2004, the almost half-year process of demolishing the then-44-year-old arena, done without the use of explosives, was completed in May 2011.

A 300-room hotel is planned to eventually be built on the demolished Spectrum's site, which is now occupied by a parking lot, as an adjunct to the Xfinity Live!