Mohegan Sun

Mohegan Sun is one of the largest casinos in the United States, with 364,000 square feet (33,800 square meters) of gaming space. It is located on 240 acres (97 ha) along the banks of the Thames River in Uncasville, Connecticut,. It is in the foothills of southeastern Connecticut, where 60 percent of the state's tourism is concentrated. It features the 12,000-seat capacity Mohegan Sun Arena, home of the New England Black Wolves of the National Lacrosse League and the Women's National Basketball Association's Connecticut Sun. It houses a 350-seat Cabaret Theatre, the 300-seat Wolf Den, and 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m²) of meeting and function room space, including the Northeast’s largest ballroom and 130,000 sq ft (12,000 m²) of retail shopping. It is the home of New London's WMOS FM radio station.

The casino contains slot machines, gaming tables including poker, blackjack, craps, roulette, Caribbean stud poker, keno and baccarat. The race book offers live horse or greyhound racing from around the U.S. as well as from Australia and England. It also offers wagering on jai-alai from Florida.

Sun Arena

Sun Arena is an indoor sporting arena located in the city of Ise, Mie Prefecture, Japan. The capacity of the arena is 11,000. The arena was host to the 2009 World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships.

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Coordinates: 34°29′22.4″N 136°46′8.28″E / 34.489556°N 136.7689667°E / 34.489556; 136.7689667

Mohegan Sun Arena

The Mohegan Sun Arena is a 10,000 seat multi-purpose arena in Uncasville, Connecticut located inside Mohegan Sun. The arena facility features 30,000 square feet (2,800 m²) of configurable exhibition space and a 400-foot (120 m) clear span. It was built by the Perini Building Company, and opened in October 2001.

History

The arena originally served as home of the Mohegan Wolves arena football team until it was sold and moved to Manchester, New Hampshire in 2004.

On January 28, 2003 the arena was announced publicly to be the official home court for the Connecticut Sun. Prior to the fall of 2002, the NBA operating model prevented any WNBA team to exist without an NBA "brother" counterpart. By the time the Connecticut Sun moved in, Val Ackerman was the WNBA president, M. Jodi Rell was the state's Lieutenant Governor and Mark L. Brown was the chairman of the Mohegan Tribe. While the arena is attached to the Mohegan Sun casino, the facility does not accept any form of sports wagering or sports booking; in fact, sports betting is illegal in Connecticut.

Mohegan people

Mohegans are a Native American people in Connecticut; the majority are associated with the Mohegan Indian Tribe, a federally recognized tribe living on a reservation in the eastern upper Thames River valley of south-central Connecticut. It is one of two federally recognized tribes in the state, the other being the Mashantucket Pequot. There are also three state-recognized tribes: Schaghticoke, Paugusett, and Eastern Pequot.

At the time of European contact, the Mohegan and Pequot were a unified tribal entity living in the southeastern Connecticut region, but the Mohegan gradually became independent as the hegemonic Pequots lost control over their trading empire and tributary groups. In 1637, English Puritan colonists with the help of Uncas, Wequash and the Narragansett's, destroyed a principal fortified village at Mistick and systematically destroyed the remaining Pequot nation during the Pequot War which finally ended with the death of Sassacus at the hands of the Mohawks. Thereafter, under the leadership of Uncas, a sachem, the Mohegan were understood to be a separate tribal nation. Uncas' name is a variant of the Algonquian name Wonkus, which translates to fox.

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.