ARANETA COLISEUM: Sports residence

Want to see James Yap and other basketball superstars do their spectacles and brawl inside the hardcourt? Or so, witness Ateneo and La salle basketball rivalry in finals? Then go deep in the heart of Cubao and locate Araneta Coliseum, the place where you can satisfy these yearning of yours.

Araneta Coliseum also known as The Big Dome is an indoor multi-purpose sports arena located in Cubao of Quezon City, Philippines. It is the largest coliseum and indoor facility in Asia. It can contain a maximum 22, 000 spectators of a particular event. It houses so many affairs and had housed countless of gigantic occasions for years now.

Primarily, this state of the art building serves as the home of the Country’s premier Basketball professional league, PBA (Philippine Basketball Association). It isn’t as huge as a staple center (the home court of the world’s famous team L.A Lakers) but still efficiently accommodating great number of basketball loving Filipinos each and every night of basketball games since the founding of league in 1975.

For the record the most number of multitude set to a local sport competition in the country was set on August 20, 2008. A total of 22,902 people jam packed the coliseum to watch the seventh and final game of the 2008 PBA Fiesta Conference Finals series between Air21 Express and the nation’s most popular ball club Barangay Ginebra Kings.

Big Dome

Furthermore, the Philippines’ biggest arena also caters sporting competition in the college ranks the UAAP (University Athletic Association of the Philippines) and the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) particularly the annual finals series of the men’s basketball tournament.

For being the main stage of both professional and amateur basketball games in the land this sports complex owned by the Aranetas had already witnessed countless of remarkable sporting events such as many rivalry games of Ateneo and La Salle, PBA annual championships and just recently, the Dream All-star game that features once in a life time visit of the likes of NBA’s 2-time MVP Kobe Bryant, scoring champion Kevin Durant and reigning MVP Derrick Rose and other NBA cagers.

Aside from the basketball, others sports disciplines like Boxing, Universities cheer dance competition and International billiards championships were also held in Araneta Coliseum. Huge numbers of Filipinos are fond of visiting the venue when people’s champion Manny Pacquiao has a bout both here in the country and in Las Vegas. A lot of men used to watch Efren Reyes and other pool masters battle the globe when ever the country is hosting World pool Championships.

While the most attended Sporting event in the collegiate level was not set by a basketball match but of a cheer dance contest, The 2008 UAAP Samsung Cheer dance Competition with record breaking crowd of 23,448 people.

Araneta Coliseum might not as big as the Cowboy stadium in Texas or as grandiose as the Colosseum in Rome that could hold millions of attendees but one thing’s for sure it would lodge the greatest number of sports Filipinos satisfactorily for the longest time it would endure.