Georgia Dome

The Georgia Dome is a domed stadium located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, between downtown to the east and Vine City to the west. It is primarily the home stadium for the NFL Atlanta Falcons and the NCAA Division I FCS Georgia State Panthers football team. It is owned and operated by the State of Georgia as part of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. The Georgia Dome was the largest domed structure in the world until 1999, when London's Millennium Dome was completed.

The Dome is accessible by rail via MARTA's Blue and Green lines, which service the nearby Dome/GWCC/Philips Arena/CNN Center and Vine City stations.

It is the 11th-oldest stadium in the NFL – 16 other venues that were hosting NFL teams at the time of the Dome's opening have either since closed or merely lost their NFL tenants.

Construction
The Georgia Dome was completed in 1992 at a cost of $214 million (US), which came from the Georgia General Assembly, making it one of the largest state-funded construction projects in state history. It seats 71,228 for football, and can hold approximately: 75,000 for concerts, 53,000 for basketball when the dome is fully open and 40,000 for basketball and gymnastics when the dome is sectioned off (one half closed off by a large curtain). For Georgia State football games, the dome is configured with 28,155 seats, with only the bulk of the lower level plus the club-level seats available for sale. The record for overall attendance at the Georgia Dome is 75,892 for the 2008 SEC Championship Game in football.

The structure is located on 9.19 acre of land; the dome has a height of 270.67 ft, a structure length of 745.75 ft, a structure width of 606.96 ft, and a total floor area of 102149.51 sqft. The dome is the largest cable-supported dome in the world. Its roof is made of teflon-coated fiberglass fabric (which is strong and lightweight) and has an area of 374584.08 sqft. From its completion until the December 31, 1999 opening of the 20 acre Millennium Dome in London, it was the largest hooked domed structure of any type in the world, but still remains the largest indoor sporting facility in the United States.

Surface
The Georgia Dome originally used AstroTurf artificial surface for its football events. In 2003, Arthur Blank, the new owner of the Atlanta Falcons, funded the new state-of-the-art FieldTurf artificial surface system.

Renovations
In 2006, the Atlanta Falcons and the Georgia World Congress Center Authority announced a $30 million renovation to the Georgia Dome. The project was separated into two stages. The first stage, which took place before the 2007 NFL season, focused on updating the premium seating areas, including the creation of eight 'super-suites' as well as an owners' club. In 2008, the exterior of the stadium was repainted from its original color scheme to match the Falcons' team colors, and the stadium's original teal seats were replaced with red seats in the 100 and 300 levels and black seats in the Verizon Wireless Club Level (200 Level). The entrance gates and concourses were also renovated and updated before the 2008 football season. Additionally, in 2009 the two video screens in both endzones were relocated to a new exterior monument sign on Northside Drive. The interior endzones each received a new and considerably wider High Definition replacement video screen that significantly enhances views of replays and provides for state-of-the-art graphics and digital presentations. That year also saw the installation of a completely new sound system, replacing the previous one that was nearly twenty years old.

Major weather-related issues
Three years after the completion of the dome, the integrity of its roof became an issue. During a Falcons pre-season game in August 1995, a severe rainstorm caused water to pool up on the fabric, tearing part of the material and causing a section of the roof to fall into the stadium. The storm was intense enough that the roof panels could be seen moving during the game, and the water and roof material later fell with enough force to smash seats in the upper decks and knock holes in concrete floors. Fortunately, no one was injured during the incident, because the collapse occurred after fans left the stadium. The roof was eventually repaired in a way that prevented similar incidents from occurring in the future.

In the 2008 Atlanta tornado outbreak on March 14, 2008, during the 2008 SEC Men's Basketball Tournament, a tornado ripped two holes in the dome during the Alabama–Mississippi State quarterfinal game, which delayed the game for one hour and three minutes. The quarterfinal game to follow between the Kentucky Wildcats and Georgia Bulldogs was postponed to the following day. The resulting damage forced the rest of the tournament to be moved to the Alexander Memorial Coliseum at Georgia Tech.Tornado Kills, 2 Pummels Downtown by Tim Eberly and Paul Shea for the ''Atlanta Journal and Constitution, March 15, 2008. Retrieved March 15, 2008.

Football
The Dome is home to the NFL's Atlanta Falcons, the NCAA Division I Georgia State Panthers of Georgia State University, the annual host (since 1998) to FCS Classic football game between Florida A&M University and another HBCU opponent (Southern in 2011 and Tennessee State University in prior years), and the annual host to the Southeastern Conference Football Championship Game, Chick-fil-A Bowl (formerly known as The Chick-fil-a Peach Bowl and The Peach Bowl) post-season college football games, and since 2004 the FIRST World Championships. The stadium also hosted Super Bowl XXVIII in 1994 and Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000.

The Georgia Dome also annually hosted the Georgia High School Association football semi-finals until 2007 and now hosts the GHSA state championship games for all classifications at the Dome.

As a result of damage done to the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, the Sugar Bowl game between the West Virginia Mountaineers and the Georgia Bulldogs was played at the Georgia Dome on January 2, 2006, the first time "the South's Biggest Bowl Game" was ever played outside the state of Louisiana. The Sugar Bowl finished a string of three football games in four days that started with the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl between LSU and Miami (Florida) and an NFL game between the Falcons and the Carolina Panthers two days later. The Georgia Dome is now the alternative site for the Sugar Bowl in future cases where the Superdome cannot host due to weather or other reasons.

Basketball
The Georgia Dome hosted the NCAA Final Four Men's Basketball National Championship in 2002 and 2007 along with regional semifinals and finals in 2001, 2004, and 2006 and NCAA Women's Final Four in 2003. The stadium will also host the 2013 NCAA Final Four Men's Basketball National Championship as well as the NCAA South Regional Semifinals and Final in 2012. It was also one of two homes, along with Alexander Memorial Coliseum, for the NBA's Atlanta Hawks during the construction of Philips Arena from 1997 to 1999, as well as hosting basketball. While playing at the Georgia Dome on March 27, 1998, the Atlanta Hawks set a then-NBA single-game attendance record with 62,046 fans. The SEC Men's Basketball Tournament has been held at the Georgia Dome during ten seasons.

Olympics
For the 1996 Summer Olympics, one-half of the arena hosted the basketball competitions (including final) while the other half hosted the artistic gymnastics events as well as team handball (men's final).

Wrestling
The Dome has been host to many WCW Monday Nitro and WWE Raw live events, including the now-infamous "Fingerpoke of Doom" on January 4, 1999 as well as the memorable championship bout between Goldberg and Hulk Hogan on July 6, 1998. The Georgia Dome also hosted WWE's WrestleMania XXVII on April 3, 2011 which featured the return of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to Wrestlemania for the first time since Wrestlemania XX.

Soccer
The stadium was an official candidate venue for hosting matches as part of the United States' 2022 FIFA World Cup bid. Qatar was selected over the United States to host the 2022 World Cup.

On June 24, 2009, the dome hosted its first ever soccer match between Mexico and Venezuela. The dome held an attendance of 51,115 fans. Precision Turf of Lilburn laid 4-by-8 foot grass sections over the dome's FieldTurf. Subsequently, on July 22, 2009, the Dome hosted an exhibition match between AC Milan of Italian Serie A league and Club America of Mexican Primera División league as part of the World Football Challenge. On July 28, 2010, Club America revisited the Dome in a friendly against Manchester City from the English Premier League.

On February 9, 2011, Mexico and Bosnia and Herzegovina played a friendly match in front of 50,507 fans.

Other events
The Professional Bull Riders' premier bull riding tour, the Built Ford Tough Series, visited the Georgia Dome from 2003–2005, and again in 2007. They will return to the Georgia Dome in 2012.

The USHRA Monster Jam series comes to the Georgia Dome every January for their winter season kickoff show. It's known as the "Super Bowl of Motorsports" and it has become one of the biggest stops Monster Jam makes in North America.

From 2004–2010, the Georgia Dome played host to the World Championship of the FIRST Robotics Competition. Over 300 teams from around the world qualify annually to compete in the championship held in mid-April. The FIRST LEGO League World Festival and FIRST Tech Challenge Championship also occurred at the same time, in different areas of the Dome. The Championship has moved to the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri for the 2011 competition season.

It is also the site of the Drum Corps International Southeastern Championship each summer.

The stadium is used as the "home" of the New York Hawks, the fictional team in the USA Network series Necessary Roughness, which utilizes Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office tax credits to film in the Atlanta area.

In January 2012, the Georgia Dome hosted the Passion conference, drawing in 44,000+ Christian college students and young adults from across the United States and the world. Passion previously held conferences simultaneously in Philips Arena and the Georgia World Congress Center in 2010 and 2011. The 2013 conference will also be held at the Georgia Dome and is expected to draw over 70,000.