Kia Center

• 1. Introduction

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  Kia Center opened its doors on the 29th of September 2010. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer gave his annual State of Downtown address inside the new building that morning. The ribbon-cutting took place at 10:01 AM. Within two weeks, a Vicente Fernández concert became the first ticketed event in the arena's history. The Orlando Magic's first preseason game followed on October 10, when the team beat the New Orleans Hornets by 54 points. What took so long to build this place? Orlando's basketball ownership had been pressing the city for a new arena for nearly ten years. And when a global pandemic shut down live events in 2020, what would a $480-million arena do with itself?

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• 2. A Decade of Negotiations

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  On the 29th of September 2006, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer sat down with Orange County Mayor Richard Crotty and the Orlando Magic to announce an agreement. That date fell exactly four years before the arena would open. The deal came after years of on-and-off talks between the Magic's ownership and the city. Amway Arena had opened in 1989, and as newer NBA facilities went up across the country, it fell further behind.

  Richard DeVos, the billionaire Amway founder who owned the Orlando Magic, led that push. His son-in-law Bob Vander Weide was the other driving force. The site they settled on was the southwest corner of Church Street and Hughey Avenue in downtown Orlando. Media coverage that day dubbed the overall plan the "Triple Crown for Downtown." The new arena was just one part of a $1.05-billion overhaul of the Orlando Centroplex. That plan also included a new $375-million performing arts center and a $175-million expansion of the Citrus Bowl.

  Amway held naming rights to the original arena and received the right of first refusal on the new one. On the 3rd of August 2009, the company exercised that right, committing to a $40-million deal to call the venue Amway Center. That arrangement held for fourteen years. On the 20th of December 2023, Kia America struck a new naming partnership, and the building became Kia Center. The full terms of the original deal were signed on the 22nd of December 2006, three weeks after the public announcement. Those terms created an arrangement that would determine, for decades, who collected what from each event.

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• 3. Splitting the Bill

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  The City of Orlando owned the new arena outright. The Magic controlled planning and construction under a requirement that contracting follow the same public bidding rules applied to government work. In return, the city received a share of naming rights and corporate suite sales, estimated at $1.75 million in the arena's first year.

  The Magic kept all ticket proceeds from their own games. Every other event's ticket revenue went to the city. The Magic also committed at least $50 million in cash upfront and agreed to cover any cost overruns. Annual rent came to $1 million, paid over 30 years.

  Orange County raised its Tourist Development Tax to 6% in 2006, adding a surcharge to hotel stays. That revenue would service the public bonds financing the arena. The Magic guaranteed $100 million of those bonds.

  The City Council voted 6 to 1 on the 23rd of July 2007. Three days later, the Orange County Board of County Commissioners voted 5 to 2, after a long day of public hearings. Final amendments cleared the City Council on August 6. On the 1st of December 2007, the city and the Magic settled on nearly $8.5 million in compensation for three landowners whose property sat on the building site. An eminent domain hearing confirmed the purchase. The design firm had been appointed four months earlier, and architectural work was already in progress.

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• 4. Design and Technology

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  Populous, formerly known as HOK Sport, served as Architect of Record. Smith Seckman Reid and Walter P Moore Engineers and Consultants joined as planning partners. The program covered 876,000 square feet, set between elevated highways, the central business district, and low-rise housing. The architects chose a simple, planar exterior of precast concrete, aluminum, and glass.

  At the eastern edge where Interstate 4 bordered the site, they anchored the corner with a tower clad in color-changing LED lighting. Big Storm Brewing Company occupied part of the tower, alongside the Orlando Magic Team Store and a hospitality space. The rooftop bar, marketed as both the "Sky Lounge" and "One 80," opened onto the Orlando climate. A separate LED panel, measuring 40 by 60 feet, addressed downtown from a position elevated above the highway.

  The centerhung scoreboard inside, manufactured by Daktronics, stands as the tallest such installation in any NBA arena. It runs across 18 displays with 6mm-pixel high-resolution technology, including two digital ring displays and four tapered corner panels. The building also has approximately 2,100 feet of digital ribbon boards. The largest of those is a 360-degree display that runs 1,100 feet around the entire seating bowl. Outside, more than 5,000 Daktronics ProPixel LED sticks, each one meter long, make up an exterior video display. That display measures 46 by 53 feet and faces drivers on Interstate 4.

  Sports and the Arts, a California-based art curator, assembled the building's collection. More than 340 works are included, among them approximately 200 museum-quality photographs and more than 140 paintings and mixed-media originals. Of the 21 artists represented, 14 are from Central Florida.

  Compared to the original Amway Arena, which covered 367,000 square feet, the new building offered 875,000. The old arena had four public restrooms for each gender. Kia Center opened with 18 men's rooms and 19 women's rooms.

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• 5. The ThunderDome

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  On the 21st of August 2020, WWE moved its television production into Kia Center. The company had been broadcasting from its Performance Center in Orlando since mid-March, when the pandemic closed arenas to live audiences. The new arrangement was branded the WWE ThunderDome. Thousands of screens filled the seating bowl, displaying remote viewers watching from home. Pyrotechnics and elaborate LED effects occupied the space that live fans would normally fill.

  Raw, SmackDown, and their associated pay-per-views all aired from the building during the residency. Five pay-per-views took place there: SummerSlam, Payback, Clash of Champions, Hell in a Cell, and Survivor Series. Not one live spectator attended any of them. WWE promoted the ThunderDome as matching the production scale of a standard pay-per-view. The setup was similar to the NBA bubble forming nearby at the same time.

  The residency ended on the 7th of December 2020. On December 11, WWE relocated to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Orlando Solar Bears and the NBA's Magic were returning to their home arena, and the normal schedule resumed. WWE did not return to Kia Center until the 9th of August 2021. That night's Raw was the first broadcast from the building since the ThunderDome had closed.

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• 6. Beyond Basketball

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  By 2012, the arena had already hosted the NBA All-Star Game. The building went on to host NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament rounds in 2014, 2017, and 2023. The 2015 ECHL All-Star Game also came to downtown Orlando. On the 14th of January 2013, the Arena Football League's Board of Directors voted to award ArenaBowl XXVI to Orlando for the summer of 2013.

  In January 2016, WWE staged its Royal Rumble pay-per-view at Kia Center. The arena's wrestling profile grew in April 2017, when WrestleMania 33 held its main event at Camping World Stadium nearby. Kia Center hosted NXT TakeOver: Orlando the Saturday before, then the post-WrestleMania editions of Raw and SmackDown.

  UFC brought four events to the arena. Werdum vs. Browne ran on the 19th of April 2014. Dos Anjos vs. Cowboy 2 followed on the 19th of December 2015. Emmett vs. Stephens came on the 24th of February 2018, and Thompson vs. Holland on the 3rd of December 2022.

  Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at Kia Center in February 2023. The South Korean group Twice is booked for two nights in March 2026 as part of the This Is For World Tour.

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