Rogers Arena

Rogers Arena, formerly the General Motors Place, is an indoor arena, located at 800 Griffiths Way in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The arena is home to the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League. The arena is sponsored by Rogers Communications. As corporate sponsors are unable to brand sporting venues during the Olympics, GM Place will be temporarily renamed Canada Hockey Place during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, in February 2010.

The arena seats 18,630 for ice hockey and 19,193 for basketball. It has 88 luxury suites, 12 hospitality suites, and 2,195 club seats.

History
Rogers Arena was completed in 1995 at a cost of $160 million in private financing to replace the aging Pacific Coliseum as the main venue for events in Vancouver and to serve as the home arena to the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League and the Vancouver Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association. The Grizzlies spent six seasons in Vancouver before moving to Memphis, Tennessee for the 2001-02 season.

The arena was briefly home to the Vancouver Ravens of the National Lacrosse League from 2002 to 2004. The operations of the team have since been suspended. Attempts were made to revive the team in 2007 and again in 2008.

Entertainment upgrades
In mid-2006 Rogers Arena was upgraded with a ProAd LED ribbon board encircling the upper bowl and shortly thereafter with a $5 million Daktronics ProStar LED scoreboard. The original Mitsubishi Mark IV displays needed to be removed since the worldwide supply of replacement parts was not large enough to keep them operating throughout the 2006-2007 hockey season.

The new LED scoreboard is built around four of the largest video displays in the NHL. Measuring 13.5 ft by 24 ft, they are capable of displaying widescreen images in 14-bit colours. Their size combined with their 10 mm pixel spacing gives them an image that is unrivaled in any NHL arena. The corners hold 5.5 ft, by 13.5 ft. displays with two ring displays each capping the top and bottom. The entire scoreboard weighs 49,000 lbs, 2% less than the one it replaced. The normally three-week assembly period was completed in only one week and as a result there were some minor technical difficulties during the first home game.

GM Place hosted the ice hockey events in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. These will be the first Olympic games to use NHL sized ice. This decision was made in order to maximize the potential crowds and revenue, instead of building a smaller, temporary venue with the international-size ice surface, as has been done for most other Winter Games. On July 2, 2003, 18,000 came to Rogers Arena to hear the announcement that Vancouver was awarded the games. The Arena will be renamed to Canada Hockey Place for the 2010 Games.

The naming rights of General Motors expired in 2010. On July 6, 2010, it was announced that Rogers Communications had accquired the naming rights and the venue would be known as the Rogers Arena. General Motors will still be involved in the arena.