Philips Arena

Philips Arena is a multi-purpose indoor arena located in Atlanta, Georgia. It was opened in 1999 at a cost of $213.5 million, physically replacing the Omni Coliseum.

Philips Arena is home to the Atlanta Hawks, of the National Basketball Association, and the Atlanta Dream, of the Women's National Basketball Association. It also served as home to the National Hockey League's Atlanta Thrashers from 1999-2011, before the team moved to Winnipeg. It is owned by the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority and operated by Atlanta Spirit, LLC, the group of investors that also owns the Hawks.

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The arena seats 18,047 for basketball and 17,624 for ice hockey. The largest crowd ever for an Atlanta Hawks basketball game at the arena was Game 6 of the 2008 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals on May 2, 2008 (against the Boston Celtics), where there was an announced attendance of 20,425. The arena includes 92 luxury suites, 9 party suites, and 1,866 club seats. For concerts and other entertainment events, the arena can seat 21,000.

Atlanta Hawks

The Atlanta Hawks are a professional basketball team based in Atlanta, Georgia. The Hawks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member team of the league's Eastern Conference Southeast Division. The Hawks play their home games at Philips Arena.

The team's origins can be traced to the establishment of the Tri-Cities Blackhawks in 1946, a member of the National Basketball League and owned by Ben Kerner. In 1949, they joined the National Basketball Association (NBA) as part of the National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America merger, and had Red Auerbach as coach briefly. In 1951, Kerner moved the team moved to Milwaukee, where they changed their name to the Hawks. Kerner and the team moved again in 1955 to St. Louis, where they won their only NBA championship in 1958 and made the NBA Finals in 1957 and 1960. The Hawks played the Boston Celtics in all three of their trips to the NBA Finals. The St. Louis Hawks moved to Atlanta in 1968, when Kerner sold the franchise to Thomas Cousins and former Georgia Governor Carl Sanders. .

Arena

An arena is an enclosed area, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theater, musical performances, or sporting events. The word derives from Latin harena, a particularly fine/smooth sand used to absorb blood in ancient arenas such as the Colosseum in Rome. It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectators. The key feature of an arena is that the event space is the lowest point, allowing for maximum visibility. Arenas are usually designed to accommodate a large number of spectators.

The term arena is sometimes used as a synonym for a very large venue such as Pasadena's Rose Bowl, but such a facility is typically called a stadium, especially if it does not have a roof. The use of one term over the other has mostly to do with the type of event. Football (be it association, rugby, or gridiron) is typically played in a stadium while basketball and ice hockey are typically played in an arena, although many of the larger arenas hold more spectators than do the stadiums of smaller colleges or high schools. There are exceptions. The home of the Duke University basketball team would qualify as an arena, but the facility is called Cameron Indoor Stadium. Domed stadiums, which, like arenas, are enclosed but have the larger playing surfaces and seating capacities found in stadiums, are generally not referred to as arenas in North America. There is also the sport of indoor American football (one variant of which is explicitly known as arena football), a variant of the gridiron-based game that is designed for the usual smaller playing surface of most arenas; variants of other traditionally outdoor sports, including box lacrosse and futsal/indoor soccer, also exist.

Philips

Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Royal Philips, commonly known as Philips) is a Dutch technology company headquartered in Amsterdam with primary divisions focused in the areas of electronics, healthcare and lighting. It was founded in Eindhoven in 1891 by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik. It is one of the largest electronics companies in the world and employs around 105,000 people across more than 60 countries.

Philips is organized into three main divisions: Philips Consumer Lifestyle (formerly Philips Consumer Electronics and Philips Domestic Appliances and Personal Care), Philips Healthcare (formerly Philips Medical Systems) and Philips Lighting. As of 2012 Philips was the largest manufacturer of lighting in the world measured by applicable revenues. In 2013, the company announced the sale of the bulk of its remaining consumer electronics operations to Japan's Funai Electric Co, but in October 2013, the deal to Funai Electric Co was broken off and the consumer electronics operations remain under Philips. Philips said it would seek damages for breach of contract in the $200-million sale.

Atlanta

Atlanta is the capital of and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia, with an estimated 2013 population of 447,841. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, home to 5,522,942 people and the ninth largest metropolitan area in the United States. Atlanta is the county seat of Fulton County, and a small portion of the city extends eastward into DeKalb County.

Atlanta was established in 1837 at the intersection of two railroad lines, and the city rose from the ashes of the American Civil War to become a national center of commerce. In the decades following the Civil Rights Movement, during which the city earned a reputation as "too busy to hate" for the progressive views of its citizens and leaders, Atlanta attained international prominence. Atlanta is the primary transportation hub of the Southeastern United States, via highway, railroad, and air, with Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport being the world's busiest airport since 1998.