Stadium

[2][3] Pausanias noted that for about half a century the only event at the ancient Greek Olympic festival was the race that comprised one length of the stadion at Olympia, where the word "stadium" originated.

Other popular stadium sports include gridiron football, baseball, cricket, the various codes of rugby, field lacrosse, bandy, and bullfighting.

Although in modern terms 1 stadion = 600 ft (180 m), in a given historical context it may actually signify a length up to 15% larger or smaller.

The Romans also developed the double-sized round theatre called amphitheatre, seating crowds in the tens of thousands for gladiatorial combats and beast shows.

Some 300 cartloads of soil from a trench beneath the railway were used to raise the ground, allowing Dunlop to use his engineering expertise to create a pitch envied around Ireland.

No football was played; instead the 12,000 crowd watched a short track and field event followed by music and a fireworks display.

[13] The architect Archibald Leitch brought his experience with the construction of industrial buildings to bear on the design of functional stadiums up and down the country.

[10] These early venues, originally designed to host football matches, were adopted for use by the Olympic Games, the first one being held in 1896 in Athens, Greece.

Designed by the engineer J.J. Webster and completed in 10 months by George Wimpey,[15] on the site of the Franco-British Exhibition, this stadium with a seating capacity of 68,000 was opened by King Edward VII on 27 April 1908.

The Baker Bowl, a baseball park in Philadelphia that opened in its original form in 1887 but was completely rebuilt in 1895, broke new ground in stadium construction in two major ways.

The stadium's second incarnation featured the world's first cantilevered second deck (tier) in a sports venue, and was the first baseball park to use steel and brick for the majority of its construction.

The largest stadium crowd ever was 199,854 people watching the final match of the 1950 World Cup at Rio de Janeiro's Maracanã on 16 July 1950.

Many of these are not actually domes in the pure architectural sense, some being better described as vaults, some having truss-supported roofs and others having more exotic designs such as a tensegrity structure.

The Caesars Superdome in New Orleans is a true dome structure made of a lamellar multi-ringed frame and has a diameter of 680 feet (210 m).

In North America, where baseball and American football are the two most popular outdoor spectator sports, a number of football/baseball multi-use stadiums were built, especially during the 1960s, and some of them were successful.

Since the requirements for baseball and football are significantly different, the trend has been toward the construction of single-purpose stadiums, beginning with Kansas City in 1972–1973 and accelerating in the 1990s.

[20] Stadium designers often study acoustics to increase noise caused by fans' voices, aiming to create a lively atmosphere.

Floodlighting in association football dates as far back as 1878, when there were floodlit experimental matches at Bramall Lane, Sheffield during the dark winter afternoons.

Since these, all Premier League, UEFA European Championship and FIFA World Cup qualifying matches require all spectators to be seated.

Due to the number of people congregating in stadiums and the frequency of events, many notable accidents have occurred in the past, some causing injury and death.

Especially where there is a perceived risk of terrorism or violence attention remains high to prevent human death and keep stadiums as places where families can enjoy a public event together.

In Europe and South America, during the twentieth century, it was common for violent bands of supporters to fight inside or close to association football stadiums.

[22] In Europe and Latin America, where there are multiple association football clubs in any given city, and several leagues in each country, no such monopoly power exists, and stadiums are built primarily with private money.

Outside professional sports, governments are also involved through the intense competition for the right to host major sporting events, primarily the Summer Olympics and the FIFA World Cup (of association football), during which cities often pledge to build new stadiums in order to satisfy the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or FIFA.

In recent decades, to help take the burden of the massive expense of building and maintaining a stadium, many American and European sports teams have sold the rights to the name of the facility.

[24] Many stadiums are attempting to counteract these issues by implementing solar panels, and high efficiency lighting, to reduce their own carbon footprint.

Also important was the use of large stadiums for American tours by bands in the later 1960s, such as the Rolling Stones, Grand Funk Railroad and Led Zeppelin.

[26] Key acts from this era included Journey, REO Speedwagon, Boston, Foreigner, Styx,[27] Kiss, Peter Frampton[28] and Queen.

[29] In the 1980s arena rock became dominated by glam metal bands, following the lead of Aerosmith[30] and including Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P.

[31] Since the 1980s, rock, pop and folk stars, including the Grateful Dead, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, have undertaken large-scale stadium based concert tours.