Madison Square Garden - the arena of dreams

If you are keen on watching the NHL or the NBA, then you certainly are familiar with the abbreviation MSG. No, this is not an intercollegiate campus. This is the legendary Madison Square Garden sports arena. This is a multi-purpose indoor stadium in New York, located in central Manhattan between 7th and 8th Avenue from 31th to 33rd Street.

The garden is mainly used for professional basketball and ice hockey games. Also, the arena is a venue for concerts, ice shows, professional wrestling, other sports and entertainment. It is close to other attractions in downtown Manhattan, including Empire State Building, Koreatown, and Macy's. Madison Square Garden is the home stadium for the New York Rangers in the National Hockey League and the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association. In addition, this arena is considered the residency of singer Billy Joel.

A small digression into history

Madison Square Garden is a stadium with an unusual history. It opened as much as 4 times. The first time it was built in 1879. Theatrical productions took place on it. Later, the stadium was moved three times to a new place: in 1890, in 1925 and in 1968. Interestingly, during all this time, the arena has never gone beyond Madison Square (the area where MSG is located), but it constantly moved from one corner to another.

The new Madison Square Garden (photo of the modern arena you can see above) was opened in 1968, after which reconstruction was completed in 1989-1991 and 2011-2013. The initial cost of the project more than 130 years ago was only 4 million dollars and accommodated about 8 thousand spectators. The modern arena costs a little over $ 1 billion. Today’s expensive technology, isn’t it?

Spaciousness

Unlike the stadiums of the National Football League (NFL) and the Major Sokker League (MLS), the arenas for basketball, hockey and boxing competitions are less spacious. But this does not mean that few people come to the competition. It's all about the atmosphere that prevails in the stadium during an event.

If you visit New York at least once in your life, Madison Square Garden is the place you must go. After all, the stands full to failure are assembled daily, and the events taking place on it cause indescribable delight among all the residents and guests of this city. Speaking in numbers, the distribution of places by event looks like this:

Seats for viewers

The seats in the Madison Square Garden were originally arranged in a six-level system, and each row had its own color. Later they were replaced with a single blue color, which caused a lot of indignation from fans of the New York Islanders hockey club - a principal rival of the Rangers.

The fact is that the club colors of the “rangers” are blue, and the “islanders” are orange. At that time, both clubs played home games in this arena. This caused dissatisfaction on the part of the Islanders, after which it was decided to paint the seats depending on the ongoing event. Let the “islanders” already have their own stadium, but the colors continued to change. During the NHL matches they remain blue, during the matches of the New York Knicks basketball - orange, and during concerts - blue. In addition, if earlier the seats were simply plastic and not particularly comfortable, now they are made of refractory and elastic material, which allows viewers to feel comfortable.

Basketball and Hockey

Madison Square Garden hosts some 320 events per year. As mentioned above, the arena is home to the New York Rangers, the New York Knicks, as well as the New York Liberty of the Women's National Basketball Association. All these teams, like Madison Square Garden itself, belong to the Madison Square Garden Company. The arena hosts the finals of the NBA Eastern Conference, as well as the finals of the National Invitation Tournament (competition among university teams).

It is worth noting that the Prudential Center and the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum also hosted the Rangers and the Knicks home games, but now they are unlikely to compete with MSG in popularity. These stadiums are now home arenas for smaller clubs of various sports, and some, frankly, not the most popular artists conduct concerts there. For a long time, Madison Square Garden hosted the Stanley Cup finals, matches of the NBA playoff finals, as well as matches of all NHL and NBA stars.

But what about other sports?

Not only these two most popular sports dominate the Garden. For example, nights of professional boxing fights are often held here, competitions without fights (including the M-1 Challenge), wrestling tournaments, as well as many other sports events. Moreover, not the most significant hockey and basketball competitions are held at this stadium, because in New York there are teams that play in lower leagues than the Rangers and Knicks.

There was even a place for lovely ladies: basketball players of the New York Liberty Women's National Basketball Association spend their matches at the stadium. Full house in the arena is provided even during such competitions!

Concerts

The main center of not only the sports, but also the cultural life of New York is, of course, Madison Square Garden. The United States of America annually hosts a huge number of outstanding artists from around the world. For example, the most popular and famous circus in the world (Cirque du Soleil) often visits the Madison Square Garden when his troupe gets to New York. In the previous section, other arenas hosting sporting events were named. They are also centers of cultural life in the second capital of the United States, however, by the significance of the events, they can hardly be compared with MSH.

It is logical that, due to the mad popularity of Madison Square Garden, Manhattan is always full of people discussing the most high-profile cultural events. After all, this arena takes them more than any other place in New York. For example, George Harrison held concerts in support of Bangladesh here, a concert for New York after the sad events of September 11th. It was here that John Lennon gave the final concert (during the Elton John concert on Thanksgiving in 1974) before his assassination in 1980. None other than Elvis Presley, too, did not miss the opportunity to collect a full house on the "Garden". The famous performer gave four concerts here in 1972. And the first and last concerts in his life took place on this arena in New York. Bo Didley, Chuck Berry, Ricky Nelson, U2, Billy Joel, Madonna, Elton John - what scale the legends just didn’t play here. And all this without taking into account world stars of our time!