Events
Philips Arena is among the busiest arenas for concerts in the world, having sold well over 550,000 concert tickets in 2007 and ranked as the third-busiest arena in the U.S. in 2011.
It hosted the NBA All-Star Game in 2003.
The facility played host to the 2004 US Figure Skating Championships.
The first playoff game played in Philips Arena was in 2005, when the Georgia Force hosted, and won, its first home playoff game. The first NHL playoff game in Philips Arena was in 2007, the Thrashers' first appearance in the 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs. The first NBA playoff game in Philips Arena was in 2008, when the Hawks made the 2008 NBA Playoffs after an eight-season drought of missing the playoffs. On April 10, 2011, the Thrashers lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins, 5-2, in their final game in franchise history. Tim Stapleton scored the final goal for the Thrashers in team history.
The venue had been named the site of the 2005 Southeastern Conference Women's Basketball Tournament; however, when the NHL announced in early 2004 that the 55th NHL All-Star Game, scheduled for February 2005 would be held in Atlanta, arena officials withdrew the Southeastern Conference Women's Basketball Tournament – which was then moved 140 miles to the northeast along Interstate 85 to the BI-LO Center in Greenville, South Carolina. Oddly, the arena would not even be the host of that planned All-Star Game due to the 2004–05 NHL lockout. As a result, Atlanta became the second (San Jose being the first) city to lose a planned All-Star Game because of a labor dispute. Philips Arena would later be announced as home to the 56th NHL All-Star Game in 2008. Also, Philips Arena hosted game three of the 2010 WNBA Finals, where the Seattle Storm defeated the Atlanta Dream.
The arena has hosted three WWE pay-per-view events: Royal Rumble (2002), Backlash (2007), and Royal Rumble (2010). WWE announced that WWE Hell In A Cell will come to Atlanta on October 28, 2012. Ten episodes of WWE Raw have also taken place at the arena (on July 9, 2001; June 10, 2002; April 21, 2003; February 6, 2006; September 4, 2006; November 17, 2008; April 13, 2009; April 4, 2011; October 31, 2011; March 26, 2012). Four episodes of WWE SmackDown ECW and WWE NXT (on December 12, 2002; September 18, 2007; August 2008; July 9, 2010) The Philips Arena also hosted the 2011 WWE Hall of Fame Ceremony on April 2, 2011. The 2012 ACC Men's Basketball Tournament was also held at Philips Arena.
As part of the celebrations for the 75th NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, the finals of the men's Division II and Division III tournaments will be held at Philips Arena on April 7, 2013, the day between the Division I semifinals and final to be held at the nearby Georgia Dome.
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Famous quotes containing the word events:
“If there is a case for mental events and mental states, it must be that the positing of them, like the positing of molecules, has some indirect systematic efficacy in the development of theory.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)