PreferredSeat.com Blog

The New Amway Center opened on October 1st and features state of the art technology and a sustainable building design in many areas.  The City of Orlando owns the new arena that was years in the making with the extremely tough job of securing financing.  At a cost of $380 million the new Amway Center is the pride of Orlando and the Orlando Magic NBA team and a showcase for future NBA arenas. 

The Amway Center was designed by the renowned stadium architects Populous, formerly known as HOK Sport and features 8 levels and 875,000 square feet, nearly three times the size of the Amway Arena, the previous home of the Magic.  There are 1,100 digital monitors and the tallest high definition video board in any NBA arena at this time along with 60 suites, club seats, all the modern amenities and more.

One of the nice things about the Amway Arena is that it is owned by the City of Orlando. The Orlando Magic were a big part of making it happen with a major financial commitment but the whole community came together including local businesses such as Walt Disney World Company, Universal Orlando, Sea World and local hotels that needed to accept a new tax on hotel rooms.

With other NBA cities such as Sacramento and the Sacramento Kings looking to build new arenas for their basketball teams and residents to enjoy more entertainment options the City of Orlando showed the way by owning the venue themselves and not making poor decisions with developers eager to take most of the profits.

There may be a few bugs to work out as there are with any new buildings of this size. The first concert at the Amway Center was Friday night and though the fans seemed to rave about the building and the amenities at least one fan commented on the My Fox Orlando website that “the sound for the concert of Vicente Fernandez was terrible”.

Tickets for all Amway Center events are available including Orlando Magic tickets for the 2011 NBA season.