Top 5 College Basketball arenas with largest seating capacity ft. Carrier Dome
With March approaching, college basketball fans are getting intense. The sport's annual climax of the NCAA Tournament is approaching, but even before those neutral-site games, there are some big crowds gathering for college hoops.
But what are the biggest sites where they gather? What school can claim the biggest home court advantage over its competition? Here are the top five college basketball arenas with the largest seating capacity, with a very clear number one in Syracuse's Carrier Dome.
Top five College Basketball arenas (With the Largest Seating Capacity)
5. Rupp Arena (Kentucky)
Since its opening in 1976, Rupp Arena has provided the Kentucky Wildcats with a massive home-court advantage. Now the fifth largest arena, seating 20,545 fans for a basketball game, the arena has had some recent facelifts, including the addition of more chairback seats in the upper levels.
Kentucky seated over 24,000 fans in the arena before a 2019 renovation, which took away some seats but added an improved fan experience.
Kentucky tickets were once so difficult to come by that they were left in fans' wills or commanded massive prices in private sales. Increased television broadcasts have dampened the demand a bit, but make no mistake, Rupp is rocking on game days.
4. Thompson-Boling Arena (Tennessee)
On a list of likely schools to maintain massive arenas, the Vols might not be the first choice. But Thompson-Boling's seating capacity of 21,678 makes it one of the nation's largest.
Since its opening in 1987, the Arena has hosted some of the best-attended women's college basketball games ever. The court is named for legendary UT women's coach Pat Summit.
But under Bruce Pearl and then Rick Barnes, UT's men's program continues to grow and shine. The Arena can't hold as many fans as the 24,535 it accomodated before a 2007 renovation, but Thompson-Boling is a premier arena in college basketball.
3. Dean Smith Center (North Carolina)
The largest arena named for a coach, Carolina's Smith Center, with its capacity of 21,750, is one of the largest and best sites for college basketball. Even more impressive, Carolina named the building for Smith in 1986, when he had yet to win his second NCAA title at UNC.
The first game at the Smith Center was North Carolina/Duke, a suitably impressive matchup for an opening battle. Carolina won that game, 95-92, and UNC hasn't lost many games since at the "Dean Dome," as it was informally known.
2. The YUM Center (Louisville)
The nation's second-largest college basketball arena stands as something of a beacon for wayward NBA franchises.
Before Denny Crum led Louisville to basketball prominence, the ABA's Kentucky Colonels shined in Louisville. But the team folded at the end of the ABA, and Kentucky hasn't been able to draw an NBA team yet.
Meanwhile, the Yum Center's 22,090 seating capacity is second only to Syracuse's in college basketball.
Given the troubles of Coach Kenny Payne's Cardinals, there are plenty of empty seats in the Yum Center, named for Yum Brands, the parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken (or KFC, as the company now prefers to be known).
It might be a less catchy name than "The Bucket," as many suggested in a paen to fried chicken and basketball, two things Kentucky loves.
1.JMA Wireless Dome (aka The Carrier Dome) (Syracuse)
Opened in 1980, the JMA Wireless Dome, which was known formally as The Carrier Dome from then until 2022, seats 35,446 fans for college basketball. That massive capacity has made the Dome a natural NCAA Tournament site, and it has hosted regional semi-finals and finals no fewer than seven times.
Give Syracuse credit for double use, as not only Carmelo Anthony and a host of Orangemen hoopers have played in the Dome, but also decades of Syracuse football stars (including QB Donovan McNabb). Even when Syracuse struggles in hoops, the massive capacity of the Dome makes for a nice football facility.