Historic Crew Stadium

• 1. Introduction

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  Historic Crew Stadium stands beside Interstate 71 in Columbus, Ohio. For years, fans knew it under two other names, Columbus Crew Stadium and later Mapfre Stadium. The Columbus Crew, the soccer club that built the place, moved out in 2021 and no longer plays its home games there. Even so, the ground stays busy. It now serves as a training base and a proving ground for the club's reserve team. It also stages concerts and championships that have nothing to do with Major League Soccer. What made this particular site worth building a stadium on in the first place, and what convinced the team that built it to eventually leave?

• 2. Building Something New

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  The Columbus Crew spent their first three seasons playing at Ohio Stadium, the University's football arena on the Ohio State campus. Large sections of the stands were blocked off during games, cutting the usable capacity from close to 90,000 down to 25,243. Even at that reduced size, the stadium's scale and field dimensions were poorly suited to soccer. Night matches required rented lighting rigs, since Ohio Stadium had no permanent lights of its own. Planned renovations to Ohio Stadium began in 1999, adding pressure to find the Crew a home built for the sport.

  Lamar Hunt, the oil billionaire who owned the Crew, funded the solution through his own company, Hunt Sports Group. The new stadium cost US$28.5 million to build, all covered with private money and no public funds. The site sat on the grounds of the Ohio Expo Center and State Fairgrounds, between East 17th Avenue and East Hudson Street. It had stood vacant for decades. The site was previously home to Columbus Auto Parts, an OEM factory supplying the automobile industry, demolished in the 1990s.

  On the 15th of May 1999, the venue opened as Columbus Crew Stadium with a match against the New England Revolution. It became the second soccer-specific stadium built in the country, after Steel Athletic Field, raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1913. It was also the first stadium built specifically for a Major League Soccer club. Writing in the 2010 Showcase issue of Stadia Magazine, journalist Ian Nuttall posed a question that still echoes through the sport. "Who'd have thought when it opened in 1999 that Major League Soccer's first purpose-built stadium would kick-start the wave of dedicated soccer-specific stadiums that continue today?" he wrote.

• 3. A Name for Sale

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  Nearly fifteen years passed before the stadium carried any sponsor's name. On the 3rd of March 2015, the Crew announced they had sold naming rights to Mapfre, a Madrid-based insurance company, under a five-year agreement. The club had been searching for a sponsor since it opened, without success, until that deal came together. When the agreement lapsed in December 2020, the Crew renamed the venue instead of pursuing a new sponsorship.

  The stadium originally seated 22,555 spectators, a number that would change twice more over the years. It dropped to 20,455 after new construction added a stage to the north end zone, with room to expand toward 30,000 seats for concerts. By 2023, the listed capacity for a soccer match stood at 19,968.

  In 2015, the Sports Turf Managers Association honored Mapfre Stadium with its Field of the Year award in the professional soccer division. The award also recognized the venue's Director of Grounds, Weston Appelfeller. That same turf would go on to carry international qualifiers, college and lacrosse championships, and outdoor concerts in the years that followed.

• 4. Hosting the World's Game

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  The stadium hosted the MLS Cup championship match in 2001. It also served as host for Major League Soccer's All-Star Game twice, in 2000 and 2005. The U.S. Open Cup final was played there on two occasions, in 1999 and 2002.

  In February 2001, the United States met Mexico at the stadium in a World Cup qualifier. Temperatures fell cold enough that the match earned the nickname La Guerra Fria, the Cold War. Both the U.S. men's and women's national teams returned many times over the years. During the 2003 Women's World Cup, the stadium served as one of the tournament's group-stage venues. It hosted matches on the 20th, 24th, and the 28th of September that year. In 2018, Mapfre Stadium was chosen as one of three sites for the SheBelieves Cup.

  Through 2013, the U.S. men's national team played ten matches at the stadium and lost only once. That unbeaten record stood at 8-3-0, with the Americans outscoring opponents 19-1. Five consecutive World Cup qualifiers against Mexico there produced four American wins by the same 2-0 scoreline, a result fans came to chant as dos-a-cero. On the 29th of March 2016, the U.S. beat Guatemala 4-0 there in World Cup qualifying. Then on the 11th of November 2016, Mexico finally won, 1-2. It was Mexico's first victory in Columbus, and the U.S. team's first World Cup qualifying loss at home in 15 years.

  The venue hosted three MLS Cup Finals between 2001 and 2020. The first, in 2001, was played there as a neutral site, with the San Jose Earthquakes beating the LA Galaxy 2-1. A 2012 rule change ended the neutral-site format, giving hosting rights instead to the club with the better regular-season record. Under that new system, the Crew hosted the final twice. They lost to the Portland Timbers 1-2 in 2015, then beat the Seattle Sounders FC 3-0 in 2020. Pandemic restrictions limited that 2020 crowd to just 1,500 fans. That win over Seattle turned out to be the Crew's last championship on the ground before the club's role there began to change.

• 5. Beyond Major League Soccer

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  The NCAA Division I Men's Soccer Championship came to the stadium twice, in 2001 and 2003. In 2002, it hosted the Steinfeld Cup, the championship game of Major League Lacrosse. Rugby arrived in June 2010, when the stadium hosted the inaugural USA Sevens Rugby Collegiate Championship Invitational.

  The Ohio High School Athletic Association has held state championship soccer tournaments at the venue regularly. Locally, it hosts the annual Westerville Football Classic, featuring Westerville Central, Westerville North, Westerville South, and New Albany high schools. Two parochial rivals, Bishop Watterson High School and St. Francis DeSales High School, have also played their football rivalry there.

  In August 2025, the Mid-American Conference announced that its women's soccer conference tournament would be held at the stadium in both 2025 and 2026. Sport was never the only draw, though. A stage built into the north end zone turned the same ground into a regular concert venue as well.

• 6. The Music Years

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  A permanent stage rose in the stadium's north end zone in 2008, built after the nearby Germain Amphitheater closed. The project displaced about 2,100 seats to make room for a proper concert setup.

  Rock on the Range, an annual festival of rock bands, ran at the stadium from 2007 to 2018. Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival took its place starting in 2019, keeping the venue's focus on rock and heavy metal music. Its first year drew 120,000 fans across sets from System of a Down, Ghost, Disturbed, Papa Roach, Foo Fighters, and Bring Me the Horizon. By 2024, attendance had climbed to 138,000 for a lineup that included Pantera, Slipknot, and Limp Bizkit. In May 2025, roughly 175,000 people attended, with Metallica headlining two of the festival's four days alongside Linkin Park, Incubus, Korn, and Alice in Chains.

  NSYNC played the venue on the 20th of August 2001, one of its earliest big-name concerts. Dave Matthews Band performed there on the 29th of July 2008, though bandmate LeRoi Moore missed the show due to injury. Kenny Chesney became a recurring headliner. He sold out all 25,088 tickets in 2009 for $1,943,542 in revenue, then sold out again in 2013 alongside Eric Church for $2,273,594. By 2018, his show grossed $3,186,820 from 26,455 of 27,207 tickets sold. Linkin Park sold out all 40,000 tickets in 2015 as part of that year's Rock on the Range.

  Rascal Flatts closed out the Ohio State Fair at the stadium in 2006, 2007, and 2009, and Journey played the fairgrounds there in August 2011. The Hella Mega Tour, featuring Green Day, Fall Out Boy, and Weezer, played there on the 17th of August 2021. By then, the Crew had already left the stadium behind.

• 7. Life After the Crew

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  As part of a new ownership proposal unveiled in 2018, the Crew announced plans for a stadium west of the Arena District near downtown Columbus. The plan called for a venue seating 20,000 spectators, with 30 suites and 1,900 club seats. Construction began in October 2019.

  The OhioHealth Performance Center, the Crew's new training facility built into the old stadium, opened in June 2021. The replacement stadium itself, later named ScottsMiracle-Gro Field, opened on the 3rd of July 2021. Historic Crew Stadium was then redeveloped into a training center, a community sports park, and a concert venue.

  As of 2020, a new authority owns Historic Crew Stadium and the adjacent city sports park. The Crew still controls its use, though, as a practice facility and home for their second-level team. The Crew's final game at the stadium came against the Chicago Fire FC, a match Columbus won 2-0.

  Columbus Crew 2, the club's MLS Next Pro team, began playing at the stadium in the 2022 season. Its first game came on the 15th of April 2022, against Orlando City B. The stadium has since taken on one more tenant, the Columbus Aviators of the United Football League. The league announced their arrival on the 31st of July 2025, ahead of the 2026 season.