The Warriors will be the first NBA team to play in an empty arena after San Francisco banned public gatherings over 1,000 people amid the coronavirus outbreak. Here's what it's like inside the team's Chase Center.
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San Francisco's $1.4 billion Chase Center opened in September 2019 and serves as the home of the Golden State Warriors basketball team.
The arena is privately financed by the NBA team, but it has Silicon Valley's tech elite to thank for making the project a reality.
Chase Center seats 18,000 people, but the Warriors will be the first NBA team to play in an empty arena for its scheduled game on Thursday against the Brooklyn Nets.
San Francisco just placed a two-week ban on large gatherings exceeding 1,000 people amid the coronavirus outbreak.
San Francisco's glitzy new $1.4 billion Chase Center arena, which will serve as the home of the Golden State Warriors basketball team, officially opened in September 2019.
The arena is privately financed, with the Warriors having poured $1.4 billion out of their own pockets to build the stadium since the city of San Francisco refused to supply financing.
The team turned to Silicon Valley's tech elite to make the project possible.
The Golden State Warriors obtained the land from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to construct their state-of-the-art stadium, and the team's investors include some of the biggest names in tech. Before the arena's opening, the team had already brought in $2 billion from the sale of tickets, suites, and corporate sponsorship. The Warriors will also see revenue generated from office space, which is set to be filled by the ride-hailing giant Uber.
The state-of-the-art arena includes the largest scoreboard in the NBA, an outdoor plaza, retail spaces, and luxurious suites that cost upward of $1.5 million.
And while the arena can seat 18,000, the games held there for the foreseeable future will happen without the fans. San Francisco placed a two-week ban Wednesday on large gatherings exceeding 1,000 people as the city grapples with a coronavirus outbreak. The Warriors will be the first NBA team to play in an empty arena.
Take a look around what is said to be a new standard for modern-day sports arenas and see how its luxurious experiences are perfect for Silicon Valley's tech A-listers.
San Francisco's glitzy new Chase Center is about to open, and the Golden State Warriors basketball team will have a new home.
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For the past 40 years, the sports team called Oakland home at Oracle Arena.
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In search of an upgrade, the Warriors looked across the bay to San Francisco to be more integrated into the city center. That's an ongoing trend among sports teams, Business Insider’s Scott Davis reports.
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But available space where you can build from the ground up is known to be scarce in San Francisco. So the team caught a break when Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff sold four city blocks to the Warriors for an undisclosed price.
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That patch of land is in the city's Mission Bay neighborhood, a part of town that has something of a biotech and medical focus.
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Source: The San Francisco Chronicle
It’s known for being home to the UCSF Medical Center and Kaiser Permanente, an Oakland-based healthcare company.
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Source: SF Curbed
Kaiser's corporate slogan was used as part of a partnership between the healthcare company and the Warriors for an undisclosed price.
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Source: SF Curbed
"Thrive City" now refers to what is roughly one block surrounding the new arena, including its outdoor plaza.
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Source: SF Curbed
The venue's financing is unlike others in the modern sports era in that Chase Center was funded privately.
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Source: Business Insider
Business Insider's Scott Davis wrote that the Warriors, a colossally successful and popular team that has advanced to the past five NBA Finals and won three of them, were worth the investment.
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Source: Business Insider
The sports team emptied $1.4 billion into the Chase Center project without any financial support from the city of San Francisco. Construction broke ground in 2017.
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Source: Business Insider
But that doesn't mean the Warriors will buckle under the costs — the Silicon Valley elite of the region's booming tech market will ensure they don't.
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The team has $2 billion under contract from a cluster of founding partners, including tech giants like Adobe, Oracle, Google Cloud, Accenture, and, of course, JPMorgan Chase, which shelled out a reported $300 million to snag the naming rights to the stadium for 20 years.
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Source: San Francisco Business Times and Business Insider
According to Reuters, the Warriors' president, Rick Welts, also said the Chase Center development would not have panned out without the revenue generated from the office space that was built as part of the project. Uber is set to occupy much of that space.
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Source: Reuters
Revenue is also expected to come from a new on-site hotel on the northeast side of the arena as well as from retail spaces outside.
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Source: Business Insider
And then there's the venue's already-jam-packed concert lineup. Eleven concerts, including Elton John and Chance the Rapper, are scheduled at Chase Center in the coming weeks before the Warriors even make their game debut in October.
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Source: Chase Center
Welts, the Warriors' president, told the media during a tour of the new arena that over time the Chase Center's biggest contribution to the city would be the entertainment aspect of the facilities.
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The stadium was designed to accommodate smaller performances as well — the arena can be split in two by a dividing wall for theater events.
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But that's only when the Warriors aren't playing. When they are, the arena's gargantuan scoreboard dangles above the center of the court.
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Clocking in at nearly 10,000 square feet, it's the largest scoreboard in the NBA.
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There are 15 screens on the center-hung display, with eight in the underbelly for fans sitting lower in the stadium bowl.
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Other displays scattered around the arena are meant to allow fans to keep track of players' game stats, among other things.
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And the team is also working on augmented-reality technology to show fans replay reels from different perspectives around the court, like from the coach's point of view or from an athlete mid-play.
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Chase Center's 18,000 seat count is smaller than Oracle Arena's. That's in line with a growing trend in newer sports arenas that focus on fewer seats and a smaller capacity.
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The seats in Chase Center are larger than Oracle Arena's.
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And the roomiest seats, 26 inches of seat pitch to be exact, are located in the section reserved for members of the Google Cloud Courtside Lounges.
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The Google Cloud lounges are just some of the luxury suites scattered around the arena. Chase Center's club suites are about twice the size of Oracle Arena's traditional suites.
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Source: Sports Business Daily
The Google lounges are hidden underneath the bowl instead of traditionally sitting above the first bowl of seats.
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Source: San Francisco Business Times
The court can't even be seen from the lounge, except by a live webcam of the court located in the seating area reserved for members.
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Inside the club, which can be accessed by all members of the Google Cloud lounges, is a private wine vault.
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Membership grants you access to every concert and every game held at Chase Center, as well as complimentary beer, wine, liquor, and two reserved parking spots in the Mercedes-Benz garage.
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The cost of such an amenity? Somewhere between $1.5 million and $2.25 million a year.
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Above the court are 44 Oracle luxury suites available for unknown prices.
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Inside one of them are a dining table, a sitting area, a kitchen, and partitioned court-facing seats to watch the game.
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There are also sections of theater box suites for groups of four featuring dining tables with seats behind a curtain and wall that face the court.
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A hip bar sits in the vicinity of them.
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Apart from luxury suites, there are corporate-branded clubs for certain ticket holders.
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The J.P. Morgan Club, for example, has two rows of floor seats reserved, so those ticket holders have access to the club's amenities, like complimentary beverages.
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There's also a Chase club with a similar structure …
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… a Budweiser Legends Club …
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… and a United Airlines Club.
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All three of those clubs are open to any ticket holder during concerts but only for certain ones during Warriors games.
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At the top of the northeast side of the stadium is the Modelo Cantina, where 140 ticket holders will have all-inclusive parking and food, among other perks.
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Their seats are right beneath the cantina.
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On the same side of the building as the cantina is the state-of-the-art Golden State Warriors player campus, which the media was asked to refrain from photographing.
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The campus is devoted to the Warriors athletes and includes two courts, a hydrotherapy room, towering shower stalls, and a lounge with a kitchen run by a full-time, in-house chef.
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But the athletes won't be the only ones to eat well — eatery stands across the venue will sport local names, like the Oakland-based Bakesale Betty. And while Oracle Arena had one kitchen servicing fans, Chase Center has nine.
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Source: Business Insider
The location of Chase Center gave officials a leg up when it came to designing a transportation system for attendees — a Muni line along Third Street already had a stop right in front of the new arena.
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Source: SF Curbed
The Muni stop was historically used by those heading to the nearby UCSF. A name change was in order, of course.
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There are also a bike valet for 300 spaces and a designated ride-sharing pick-up spot. For those opting to drive themselves, there are 950 subterranean parking spots.
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Source: SF Curbed
There is also a new ferry terminal planned for a location near 16th Street, but Welts told media members that a funding issue was plaguing its construction.
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More than $14 million in new tax revenue is expected to pour from Chase Center, according to SF Curbed.
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Source: SF Curbed
With the stadium's more spacious seating, technologically advanced viewing experiences, and over-the-top luxury suites, the Bay Area's tech bigwigs should be thrilled with their investment.
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