Exterior, July 2009
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Former names | Cowboys Stadium (2009–2013) |
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Address | 1 AT&T Way |
Location | Arlington, Texas |
Coordinates | 32°44′52″N 97°5′34″W / 32.74778°N 97.09278°WCoordinates: 32°44′52″N 97°5′34″W / 32.74778°N 97.09278°W |
Owner | City of Arlington |
Operator | Dallas Cowboys |
Executive suites | 342 |
Capacity | Football: 80,000 |
Record attendance |
Football: 105,121 September 21, 2009 Dallas Cowboys vs. New York Giants Basketball: 108,713 February 14, 2010 2010 NBA All-Star Game Boxing: 51,420 September 17, 2016 Canelo vs. Smith Professional Wrestling: 101,763 April 3, 2016 WrestleMania 32 |
Surface | Matrix artificial turf |
Construction | |
Broke ground | September 20, 2005 |
Opened | May 27, 2009 |
Construction cost |
$1.3 billion ($1.45 billion in 2015 dollars) |
Architect | HKS, Inc. |
Project manager | Blue Star Development/Jack Hill |
Structural engineer |
Walter P Moore Engineers and Consultants Campbell & Associates Consulting Engineers, Inc. |
Services engineer | M-E Engineers, Inc. |
General contractor | Manhattan/Rayco/3i |
Tenants | |
Dallas Cowboys (NFL) (2009–present) Cotton Bowl Classic (NCAA) (2010–present) |
AT&T Stadium, formerly Cowboys Stadium, is a retractable roof stadium in Arlington, Texas, United States. It serves as the home of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League (NFL) and was completed on May 27, 2009. It is also the home of the Cotton Bowl Classic. The facility, owned by the city of Arlington, can also be used for a variety of other activities such as concerts, basketball games, college and high school football contests, soccer matches, and and Spartan races. It replaced the partially covered Texas Stadium, which served as the Cowboys' home from 1971 through the 2008 season.
The stadium is sometimes referred to as "Jerry World" after Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who originally envisioned it as a large entertainment mecca. The stadium seats 80,000, making it tied as the fifth largest stadium in the NFL by seating capacity with the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The maximum capacity of the stadium with standing room is 105,000. The record attendance for an NFL game was set in 2009 with a crowd of 105,121. The Party Pass (open areas) sections are behind seats in each end zone and on a series of six elevated platforms connected by stairways. It also has the world's 24th largest high definition video screen, which hangs from 20-yard line to 20-yard line.
Originally estimated to cost $650 million, the stadium's current construction cost was $1.15 billion, making it one of the most expensive sports venues ever built. To aid Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones in paying the construction costs of the new stadium, Arlington voters approved the increase of the city's sales tax by 0.5%, the hotel occupancy tax by 2%, and car rental tax by 5%. The City of Arlington provided over $325 million (including interest) in bonds as funding, and Jones covered any cost overruns. Also, the NFL provided the Cowboys with an additional $150 million loan, following its policy for facilitating financing for the construction of new stadiums.
A pair of nearly 300 ft (91 m)-tall arches spans the length of the stadium dome, anchored to the ground at each end. The new stadium also includes "more than 3,000 Sony LCD displays throughout the luxury suites, concourses, concession areas and more, offering fans viewing options that extend beyond the action on the field". It also houses a center-hung Mitsubishi video display board that was the largest high-definition television screen in the world at the time of their installation. It has since been surpassed in size by the Panasonic "Big Hoss" video board (218 feet (66 m) wide and 94.6 feet (28.8 m) tall) at Texas Motor Speedway. Glass doors, allowing each end zone to be opened, were designed and constructed by Dallas-based Haley-Greer glass systems.