LONG TERM: Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse has undergone approximately $250 million in improvements since the Cavaliers were acquired by Dan Gilbert.

Venue opened as Gund Arena

Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse photographs the stars of sports and entertainment in Cleveland, Ohio.

Home to the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers since its opening in October 1994, the downtown arena celebrates three decades of sports and music milestones while keeping an eye on the future.
“We talk a lot about Cleveland and Northeast Ohio being a world-class city without the world-class ego and that’s ultimately what our building embodies every day,” said Nic Barlage, Cleveland Cavaliers, Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and CEO of Rock Entertainment Group .

Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse opened as Gund Arena and has a remarkable past. It was preceded by the 12,000-capacity Cleveland Arena, which opened in 1937. The arena was the first home of the Cavaliers in 1970 and was known as the site of the Alan Freed-produced Moondog Coronation Ball in 1952, considered the first rock ‘n’ roll concert. After falling into disrepair, the downtown location was replaced in 1974 by the 20,273-seat Richfield Coliseum, 25 miles south of Cleveland.

Reclaiming the center from the rural suburbs was a game changer. The Gund Arena opened as part of the Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex, which is owned by the city and Cuyahoga County and managed by the nonprofit Gateway Economic Development Corp. The complex consists of the 19,432-capacity Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and the adjacent Progressive Field, a 34,830-seat baseball park that serves as the home of Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians, which also opened in 1994.

Billy Joel performed for the grand opening on October 17 and the Cavaliers played their first regular season game on November 8. The Cavs scored their biggest win of their first season in the new arena on February 15, 1995, when the team defeated Shaquille. O’Neal and the Orlando Magic 100-99 in overtime.

LET EM KNOW: Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, shown during a 2024 playoff game against the Boston Celtics. (Getty Images)

“It was the shot that gave us an even longer legacy of opportunities,” Barlage said. “We have evolved as a venue and I give a lot of credit to our chairman Dan Gilbert; from a private perspective, we have invested significantly in the location.”

Barlage estimates the investment at “nearly a quarter of a billion dollars,” and the spending began in 2005 when the NBA approved the purchase of the Cavs by the investor group led by Gilbert, the chairman and founder of Quicken Loans. The arena was renamed Quicken Loans Arena and the renovations included new wine-colored seats, state-of-the-art scoreboard, video and sound system upgrades, new arena graphics and signage and improvements to security, locker rooms and suites.

In 2007, the Utah Grizzlies minor league hockey team moved to Cleveland and became the Lake Erie Monsters (now the Cleveland Monsters) of the American Hockey League. On April 7, the arena hosted the NCAA Women’s Final Four for the first time. On June 2, the Cavaliers defeated the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals to advance and host their first NBA Finals at the FieldHouse.

“We’ve been fortunate to have had two All Star games here. We just hosted the most productive Women’s Final Four in NCAA history, which was our second Women’s Final Four to take place here,” Barlage said. “We have had the hallmark of hosting massive sporting events in addition to five NBA Finals, turning what was first Gund Arena, then Quicken Loans Arena and now Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse into a must-play destination.”

Following the return of native son LeBron James in 2014, the Cavaliers won the 2016 NBA championship, the city’s first big league title since 1964. The arena hosted the Republican National Convention in 2016 and announced expansion plans that would last two years at a cost of $185 million, with 70% financed by the arena and 30% from public sources.

The renovation expanded the arena’s square footage from 95,380 to 152,970, adding a new glass facade, 42,530 square feet of new public space in the atrium and 62 redesigned suites. The location was renamed Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in April 2019 to coincide with the floor-to-ceiling transformation. Akron, Ohio favorites The Black Keys played for the grand reopening.
The transformation “allowed us to invest in some of the best technology and some of the best experiences across the board,” Barlage said.

The renovations include an arts program curated by Library Street Collective and privately funded by Gilbert and his wife Jennifer. The 100-piece collection includes site-specific works, including a basketball billowing across a white background, from 22 diverse local, national and international artists.

Technology was at the forefront, including the addition of the Power Portal, a 360-degree tunnel with 2,200 square meters of LED panels and more than 24 million pixels to create an immersive audiovisual entrance connecting the atrium to the street-level concourse. Also new was the Curtain Wall, an aluminum facade of 71,000 square meters that can be illuminated with 1,500 different color combinations. The main scoreboard, called ‘Humongotron’, is the fourth largest scoreboard in an NBA arena.

INVOLVED: Technology-focused capital projects in the arena include the Power Portal, an immersive tunnel connecting the atrium to the street-level concourse.

Cleveland placed the Rock in Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse for the first time in 2021 with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Typically held in New York City or Los Angeles, Cleveland was the big winner with a total economic impact of $50.7 million, $18.7 million in revenue earned by local employees, $4.7 million in state and local tax revenue as a result of additional economic activity and an estimated 30,455 unique visitors, 90% of whom are visitors from outside Cuyahoga County. The 2024 ceremony will take place on October 19 at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and will be streamed live on Disney+ before airing on ABC.

“We are an incredible sports town, but what’s just as remarkable is the fact that we have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame right down the street from us,” Barlage said, referring to the physical location of the Rock Hall museum in downtown Cleveland. “Now we’re in the rotation to host the induction ceremony here, in partnership with the Rock Hall and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, and you have an additional element that I’ll call an experiential value proposition for the artists.”

FIRST SEATS: Former Cavs execs Dave Aucker and Tom Chestnut at the 1994 opening of Gund Arena, the original name of the Cleveland Arena.

While major renovations in 2019 focused on public aspects of the site, the renovations did not stop there. In 2022, two bars were added to the club level of the venue and in 2023, a sports book and a revamped team store were added and a shift towards prioritizing the back-of-house experience of the artist and entourage took place.

“It has always been a priority of ours to ensure we put Cleveland’s best foot forward as we bring nationally and internationally acclaimed acts to Northeast Ohio,” said Barlage. “We want it to be a world-class experience.”

The key was versatility and the ability to accommodate both visiting teams and high-profile one-off events, with the ability to configure spaces depending on need while providing high-quality finishes and amenities, including a $1 event-level furnishing renovation 15 million. rooms, called Star Rooms.

“It gives us another exclamation point,” Barlage explains. “The secret behind the scenes is the experience we curate for the artists, for the managers, for the promoters. We want to make it a prescriptive experience.”

Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse will debut these renovated spaces in 2024 with the largest NCAA Women’s Final Four event in history, drawing an estimated 18.9 million viewers and 436,055 in tournament attendance, an attendance record for the Division 1 Women’s Basketball Championship. In October, they will host the return of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, the venue’s 30th anniversary celebration on October 17 and the start of the Cavaliers’ preseason.

“We have some of the biggest fans in the world and now we have a venue that is celebrating 30 years of excellence and it is very important for us to continue to maintain and build on the reputation but also the momentum that we have. created over 30 years,” said Barlage.

Looking ahead, the FieldHouse Now app will launch on February 12, 2025. The app will make fans part of the game, including a light show activated by their phones during the game’s most hyped moments. The app includes countdown triggers that remind fans when it’s time to return to their seats for tip-off, halftime or other meaningful moments during the game.

In addition, Rocket Mortgage will be the presenting sponsor of Canon’s C-View technology, rebranded as FieldHouse Vision. The Cavaliers are the only NBA team with this on-site camera system, which records and reconstructs the action on the court. The result is a lifelike experience that virtually transports fans from their homes to center court.

“We think of Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse as this physical platform that is the living room for the world to watch Cleveland in a positive and impactful way,” Barlage said. “That’s a primary responsibility of ours to make sure that we have a venue that not only attracts world-class events, but can really take place without a hitch and showcase all the positive attributes of our city and Northeast Ohio.”