• Because of the huge cost associated with building a stadium for a team, many schools are looking to use an arena for multiple sports
• Two sports that go great together in a single arena are hockey and basketball. Both of these are played indoors and on a field of roughly the same size
• Combining hockey and basketball in the same arena is easy to do and is actually being done today by many schools and professional venues as well

As company that produces electronic scoreboards for multi-sports such as hockey scoreboards we know what it takes to plan utilizing same facility for these two very different sports. To combine hockey and basketball, there has to be a lot of planning done upfront. Even though the size of the stadium required is similar, there are different needs for both sports and these have to be accounted for. In basketball, the floor is open to the fans and with hockey there is a protective glass wall assembled and a penalty box on both sides of the ice that needs to be assembled. These can be made as temporary structures that are easy to remove when converting back to basketball, but space still needs to be accounted for when building the arena. Also the seating layout in hockey and basketball are a little different as well. Basketball has seating right up to the back of the players on the floor, and hockey needs to have the seating set back a little to account for the glass walls installed, and all of this needs to be designed in advance.

The flooring is also very critical when combining hockey and basketball. The conversion between the two sports needs to be an easy process that can be repeated as the seasons change. The way most arenas accomplish this conversion is by laying the wooden planking used for the basketball games over top of the frozen hockey rink. There is also a layer of insulated padding set down on top of the ice and under the flooring to prevent the basketball floor from becoming cold. This is a fairly easy process that can be completed quickly as part of a setup for a game.

Another conversion that needs to take place in an arena used for hockey and basketball is the scoreboard. The scoreboard used for these two sports is different and this conversion needs to be easy as well. There are several newer scoreboards that are designed for multi-sport use and can easily be used for hockey and basketball with a simple conversion. This may involve the changing of a few title displays over the digits, or even having this done automatically through the use of small LED panels. These LED panels can display text and can easily be changed from reading “penalty” to reading “fouls” at the flip of a switch. There are several models of these multi-sport scoreboards that are designed to be used for both of these sports that can be further customized as needed for your school. One other feature that many arenas are adding to their scoreboards is a large LED display. This display can broadcast player details, replays or even act as the entire scoreboard itself. In this way, it provides the ultimate in customization when switching from hockey to basketball in the same stadium.