With a seating capacity of 25,000, the arena rarely attracted large crowds, with the usual attendance being around 2,000.

The West Stand, located behind the goal, was generally the more vocal of the two sides used by home supporters.

[5] Since then, the ground averaged a gate of around 1,500 to 2,000 supporters, although certain fixtures such as the derby match defeat against local rivals Hartlepool United in March 2007 (9,987 spectators), pulled in a significantly larger turnout.

[1] Attendances for football matches were restricted to 10,000 by local planning regulations,[2] because of poor access roads around the stadium, although the club was allowed to apply for an exception for special occasions – namely cup ties against bigger clubs.

[4] This would be proved to be true, as they were promoted to National League 1, the third tier of English rugby union, beginning in the 2014–15 season.

Starting in 2006, Darlington Arena was mentioned within the Tees Valley Metro scheme as a new possible station site.

In the initial phases the services would have been heavy rail mostly along existing alignments with new additional infrastructure and rollingstock.

The later phase would have introduced tram-trains to allow street running and further heavy rail extensions.