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Groundshare

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SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, the shared home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers

A groundshare, also known as a shared stadium or shared arena, is the principle of sharing a stadium between two local sports teams. This is usually done for the purpose of reducing the costs of either construction of two separate facilities and related maintenance.[1]

Types of groundshares

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Intersport groundshares

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Given sufficient compatibility between facility requirements, two teams that do not play the same sport may share a ground or a stadium. North American indoor arenas commonly feature basketball and ice hockey teams sharing the facility during their common fall-to-spring season; a layer of insulation and a basketball floor can easily be laid over or removed from the hockey rink, and dasher boards disassembled or reconfigured, in a matter of hours.

Historically baseball and American football teams often shared a large general-purpose outdoor or domed stadium, particularly during the multi-purpose stadium era of the 1960s–1990s, despite the dissimilarity of their fields; historically before the television age, the National Football League and its teams rented baseball stadiums and did not have the resources to build a team-specific stadium outside of rare examples such as the two-stadium Truman Sports Complex in Kansas City, Missouri.[1]

This practice fell out of fashion in the 1990s as baseball teams entered the retro-classic ballpark age, where stadiums became more classically styled to the sport, and were intentionally sized to disallow a football layout entirely unless they have a deep outfield, along with seating arrangements which would disadvantage the views football spectators. In turn, the NFL's popularity allowed their teams to demand and have stadiums build specifically designed to host that sport, along with being able to easily accommodate domestic or international soccer as American spectator interest in that sport grew. The development of Major League Soccer and the United States soccer league system then allowed for the development of soccer-specific stadiums which could also host college football and high school football without the overhead and 'empty bowl' feel of the 50,000+ seats required to host an NFL game.

A variation on the groundshare concept exists commonly within the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League. As the space requirements for a regulation NHL hockey rink can easily contain a regulation NBA basketball court comfortably with additional courtside seating, in many cases where a metropolitan area has both an NBA and an NHL franchise, the teams will share the same arena.

Intrasport groundshares

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Two teams in this arrangement share the same ground. These may be two non-competing teams who play at different levels, such as Bury F.C., renting Gigg Lane to F.C. United of Manchester in England.[1] Often, this is done for economical reasons to allow a city with multiple teams in the same sport to share one site, or due to local opposition (mainly from competing venues) against having two stadiums devoted to the same sport in a metropolitan area, an arrangement done for the New York Giants and Jets at MetLife Stadium after the Jets' own proposal to build a stadium on the west side of Manhattan was rejected due to local opposition.

Intraleague groundshare

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This is where two teams in the same league share the same ground, such as the New York Giants and New York Jets sharing MetLife Stadium and the Los Angeles Chargers and Los Angeles Rams share SoFi Stadium, in Inglewood.

In the NBA, two franchises share one arena from 1999 to 2024: both the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers shared Crypto.com Arena, though the arrangement ended when the Clippers' new arena, Intuit Dome, opened in 2024.

Examples of groundsharing

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Intraleague groundshares

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American Football

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Association Football

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Australian Rules Football

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Baseball

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Ice Hockey

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Former intraleague groundshares

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Association Football

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Baseball

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Rugby

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Basketball

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Intersport groundshares

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Former

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References

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  1. ^ a b c Jacob, Gary (November 7, 2007). "Spurs consider groundshare in talks about stadium plans". The Times. London. Archived from the original on May 24, 2011. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  2. ^ Baker, Geoff (October 22, 2021). "After $1.15 billion renovation, Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena 'will surprise people in the greatest way'". The Seattle Times. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  3. ^ Evans, Jayda (June 16, 2024). "Sounders' purchase of Reign FC finalized, ushering in new era of Seattle soccer". The Seattle Times. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
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