Ball Arena

• 1. Introduction

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  Ball Arena sits on Speer Boulevard in downtown Denver, Colorado, a building that has been home to championship hockey, championship basketball, a presidential nomination, and a wrestling feud that spilled into prime-time television. Opened in October 1999 on a 4.6-acre site, it replaced McNichols Sports Arena as the home of both the Denver Nuggets and the Colorado Avalanche. Since then, it has also become the home ice for the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League.

  The arena was known as Pepsi Center from its opening until late 2020, when Broomfield-based Ball Corporation purchased the naming rights through a global multi-year agreement with Kroenke Sports and Entertainment. That deal made Ball Corporation the official sustainability partner of the arena, binding all KSE-owned teams and venues to switch toward recyclable aluminum packaging for concessions by 2022.

  What did it take to build a sports and entertainment hub at this scale? Who has played here, fought here, and sung here? And why did the week of the 18th of May 2009 generate enough bad blood to spill onto national television? Those are the threads this documentary will follow.

• 2. Building and the Site

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  Groundbreaking for the arena was held on the 20th of November, 1997, on a 4.6-acre parcel in downtown Denver. Construction moved quickly enough that the arena was ready for its opening in October 1999. The building was designed to serve multiple tenants under one roof, and from the start the complex included more than just the main bowl. A basketball practice facility for the Denver Nuggets was built into the complex, as was the Breckenridge Brewery Mountain House, a restaurant accessible both from inside the arena and from the street outside.

  Inside the atrium, a suspended sculpture depicts hockey and basketball athletes in action poses. The arena is accessible via two nearby exits off Interstate 25, and a light rail station on the western side of the complex provides a transit connection to the rest of Denver.

  In 2013, one of the arena's most visible interior fixtures was updated. The octagonal scoreboard that had hung since opening night was replaced before the 2013-14 season with a new four-sided rectangular unit. Its two center faces each measure 27 by 48 feet, while the two end faces measure 21 by 25 feet.

  The arena's footprint is set to grow dramatically in the years ahead. In May 2022, plans were announced to redevelop the surrounding parking lots into a 55-acre mixed-use neighborhood designed to reconnect the arena to downtown Denver. On the 21st of October, 2024, the Denver City Council approved the project at a revised scale of 64 acres, with a target of more than 6,000 housing units to be built by 2050.

• 3. Hockey at the Center

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  Two Stanley Cup Final series, in 2001 and 2022, have been decided at the arena, and the Colorado Avalanche won both. In the 2001 series, the Avalanche clinched the championship at home. The 2001 run also included the arena hosting the NHL All-Star Game earlier that year.

  College hockey has drawn large crowds to the building as well. In 2007, the University of Denver hosted the west regionals of the NCAA Division I hockey tournament at the arena. The following year, the venue stepped up to host the Frozen Four round of the 2008 tournament.

  On the 12th of January, 2025, the arena made women's hockey history. A game between the Montreal Victoire and the Minnesota Frost marked the first Professional Women's Hockey League contest ever played in Denver. The attendance that night was 14,018, a new record for women's hockey attendance in the United States. The PWHL returned to the arena on the 25th of January, 2026, and again on the 15th of March, 2026, for further matchups among league teams.

  The women's attendance record set in January 2025 was not just a Denver milestone. It stood as the highest single-game figure for women's hockey anywhere in the country at the time, a marker that speaks to the interest the arena can generate when it hosts the right event.

• 4. Basketball Milestones

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  Ball Arena hosted the 2005 NBA All-Star Game, a marquee event that put Denver at the center of the league's annual showcase. Nearly two decades later, the building hosted another defining moment: three games of the 2023 NBA Finals.

  Game 5 of the 2023 Finals was played on the 12th of June, 2023, and the Denver Nuggets won the championship on their home floor. It was the first title in the franchise's history, ending what the source describes as a 47-year drought. The crowd that night saw something the city of Denver had never witnessed in professional basketball.

  The arena has also been a reliable venue for college basketball. NCAA Division I men's tournament games have been held there in 2004, 2008, 2011, 2016, and 2023. In 2012, the arena hosted the NCAA Women's Final Four, organized that year by the Mountain West Conference. From 2004 to 2006, the arena was the site of the Mountain West Conference men's tournament, giving the building a run of years in which college basketball was nearly as prominent as the NBA season itself.

  The 2023 Nuggets title came 47 years after the franchise's founding era, and the franchise won it in front of its own fans at Speer Boulevard, which made the 12th of June a date that Denver basketball supporters are unlikely to forget.

• 5. The Denver Debacle

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  On the 18th of May, 2009, WWE announced that it was cancelling and relocating three events it had scheduled in Colorado, among them a Raw television taping that had been booked for the 25th of May at Pepsi Center. The conflict arose because the Denver Nuggets were scheduled to play Game 4 of the NBA Western Conference finals against the Los Angeles Lakers on that same date. All three displaced events were moved to Staples Center, the Lakers' home arena in Los Angeles.

  Vince McMahon, WWE's co-founder and CEO at the time, appeared on Denver television station KUSA and blamed the situation on what he called the "inept management" of Stan Kroenke, who owned both the arena and the Nuggets. A KSE spokesperson pushed back, accusing McMahon of running a "propaganda campaign" and stating that the company had believed a verbal agreement had been reached as recently as the Tuesday before the announcement.

  WWE did not let the matter rest. The Raw episode that aired on the 25th of May opened with a skit featuring impersonators of Kroenke and Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss. The fictional "Kroenke" boasted about the Nuggets and expressed indifference to WWE fans. McMahon then entered the ring, joked about launching a basketball league called the XBA, a nod to his failed XFL football venture, and physically shoved the impersonator to make his point.

  The main event of that broadcast was an NBA-themed 5-on-5 tag team match. A team in Lakers jerseys, consisting of John Cena, Batista, Jerry Lawler, MVP, and Mr. Kennedy, defeated a team in Nuggets jerseys, consisting of Randy Orton, The Miz, Cody Rhodes, Ted DiBiase, and Big Show. WWE rescheduled its Raw taping at Pepsi Center for the 7th of August that same year.

• 6. Concerts and Cultural Events

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  Celine Dion performed the first event ever held at the arena, a sold-out concert on the 1st of October, 1999. Dion dedicated the show to the Columbine community, less than six months after the school shooting there. That dedication gave the building's inaugural night a weight that extended well beyond the arena itself.

  In the years since, the venue has welcomed an extensive roster of artists, including Beyonce, Destiny's Child, Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Coldplay, Demi Lovato, Nick Jonas, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Imagine Dragons, Pink, NSYNC, Shania Twain, Cher, Kiss, Justin Timberlake, Elton John, Twenty One Pilots, and Madonna.

  Not all performances have been without controversy. Madonna's concert on the 18th of October, 2012, as part of her MDNA Tour, drew complaints after the show reportedly started three hours late and included simulated gun use during performances of her tracks "Revolver" and "Gang Bang". That performance came less than three months after a mass shooting at a movie theatre in nearby Aurora, Colorado, and many audience members found the imagery poorly timed.

  The arena has also hosted events far outside the mainstream concert world. During the week of the 2nd through the 8th of July, 2007, it served as the site of the International Convention and Contests of the Barbershop Harmony Society. In January 2025, bluegrass musician Billy Strings played three consecutive sold-out nights at the arena, performances that stood as the highest-attended shows of his career to that point.

  The arena's largest political moment came in 2008, when it hosted the majority of the Democratic National Convention, including the official nomination of then-Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. The convention's closing night, featuring Obama's acceptance speech, was moved to Invesco Field at Mile High, which could hold a larger crowd for the occasion.

• 7. Racing and Mixed Martial Arts

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  After a short-lived race at the Denver Civic Center in the early 1990s, the Champ Car World Series established the Grand Prix of Denver as an annual street circuit race around what was then Pepsi Center. The race ran until after the 2006 event, when it was discontinued.

  UFC held its first event at the arena on the 24th of September, 2011, with UFC 135: Jones vs. Rampage. The promotion returned the following August for UFC 150: Henderson vs. Edgar II, then again in 2017 for UFC on Fox: Shevchenko vs. Pena, and in November 2018 for UFC Fight Night: The Korean Zombie vs. Rodriguez. The most recent UFC event at the arena at the time of this writing was UFC on ESPN: Namajunas vs. Cortez in July 2024.

  In September 2024, the arena also hosted ONE Championship's ONE 168, bringing a second major mixed martial arts organization to the building for the first time. The range of combat sports events staged here, from the early Champ Car races outside to the UFC bouts inside, has made the arena one of the more versatile action sports venues in the American West.