The Darlington Arena

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The Balfour Webnet Darlington Arena
Full name	The Balfour Webnet Darlington Arena
Location	Darlington, England
Opened	2003
Owner	Darlington F.C.
Operator	Darlington F.C.
Surface	Grass
Tenants	Darlington F.C.
Capacity	25,033
Field dimensions	110 × 74 yards

The Darlington Arena (known as the The Balfour Webnet Darlington Arena for sponsorship reasons) is a football stadium in England that hosts Darlington Football Club's home fixtures.

[edit] History

Prior to moving to the ground in 2003, Darlington had been playing at Feethams, located near to the town centre. The current stadium is built on a greenfield site next to Darlington's A66 bypass.

Upon completion the arena was originally called the Reynolds Arena, after the club's then-owner, George Reynolds. However, following Reynolds' bankruptcy and arrest on charges of money laundering, the name was changed to The New Stadium in April 2004. Since then the club have sold the naming rights for the stadium to sponsors, firstly as the Williamson Motors Stadium and then the 96.6 TFM Darlington Arena between November 2005 and September 2007. The ground took its current name in September 2007.

Already larger than some Premiership stadiums, the ground has the theoretical potential to be expanded to a capacity of approximately 60,000 seats. However, as the club currently resides in the bottom tier, three divisions below the Premiership (the highly ambitious aim of Reynolds when he commissioned the stadium), the likelihood of this ever coming to fruition seems highly doubtful.

A crowd of 11,600 watched the first game in the new stadium for a 2–0 defeat to Kidderminster Harriers and since the ground has averaged a gate of around 3,000-4,000 supporters, although certain fixtures such as derby match against local rivals Hartlepool United in March 2007 (10,121 spectators), have pulled in a significantly larger turnout.

The capacity of the stadium is currently capped at 10,000 for football matches due to poor access roads around the stadium, although the club are allowed to apply for an exception for certain occasions.

[edit] Other uses

Darlington plan to use the stadium for musical concerts to increase club revenue. The first set of concerts, called Pitch Invasion, were due to take place in June 2007 but were cancelled by the club just three months before.^[1] However, in November 2007, the club announced that Elton John would be the first act to play at the stadium, on 5 July 2008.^[2]