We toured the Golden State Warriors' new, $1.4 billion San Francisco arena, the most luxurious arena in sports, and it's just what San Francisco's tech elite ordered

Katie Canales

Aug 30, 2019, 04:02 IST

San Francisco's glitzy, new, $1.4 billion Chase Center arena, which will serve as the home of the Golden State Warriors basketball team, will officially open on September 6, 2019.
The arena is privately financed, with the Warriors having poured $1.4 billion out of their own pockets to build the stadium since the city of San Francisco refused to supply financing.
The team turned to Silicon Valley's tech elite to make the project possible.
The Golden State Warriors obtained the land from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to construct its state-of-the-art stadium, and the team's investors include some of the biggest names in tech.
Before the arena's opening, the team has already brought in $2 billion from the sale of tickets, suites, and corporate sponsorship.
The Warriors will also see revenue generated from office space, which is slated to be filled by ride-sharing giant Uber.
The state-of-the-art arena includes the largest scoreboard in the NBA, an outdoor plaza, retail spaces, and luxurious suites for the uber-wealthy that cost upwards of $1.5 million.
Take a look around what is said to be a new standard for modern-day sports arenas and see how its luxurious experiences are perfect for Silicon Valley's tech A-listers.
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We toured the Golden State Warriors' new, $1.4 billion San Francisco arena, the most luxurious arena in sports, and it's just what San Francisco's tech elite ordered

San Francisco’s glitzy new Chase Center is about to open, and the Golden State Warriors basketball team will finally have a new home.

For the past 40 years, the sports team called Oakland home at Oracle Arena.

In search of an upgrade, the Warriors looked across the bay to San Francisco to be more integrated into the city center. That's an ongoing trend among sports teams, Business Insider’s Scott Davis reports.

But available space that you can build on from the ground up is notoriously scarce in San Francisco. So the team caught a break when Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff sold four city blocks to the Warriors for an undisclosed price.

That patch of land is in the city’s Mission Bay neighborhood, a part of town that has something of a biotech and medical focus.

It’s known for being home to the UCSF Medical Center and Kaiser Permanente, an Oakland-based healthcare company.

It’s the latter's corporate slogan that was used as part of a partnership between the healthcare company and the Warriors for an undisclosed price.

"Thrive City" now refers to what is roughly one block surrounding the new arena, including its outdoor plaza.

The venue's financing is unlike others in the modern sports era in that Chase Center was entirely financed privately.

With a colossally successful and popular team like the Warriors, who have advanced to the past four NBA Finals and have won three of them, they’re worth the investment, writes Business Insider's Scott Davis.

The sports team emptied $1.4 billion into the Chase Center project without any financial support from the city of San Francisco. Construction broke ground in 2017.

But that doesn't mean that the Warriors will buckle under the costs — the Silicon Valley elite of the region's booming tech market will make sure they don’t.

The team has $2 billion under contract from a cluster of founding partners, including tech giants like Adobe, Oracle, Google Cloud, Accenture, and, of course, JP Morgan Chase & Co., which shelled out a reported $300 million to snag the naming rights to the stadium for 20 years.

According to Reuters, Warriors president Rick Welts also said that without the revenue generated from the office space that was built as part of the project, the Chase Center development would not have panned out. Uber will occupy much of that office space.

Other forms of revenue will come from an on-site hotel that will be on the northeast side of the arena as well as retail spaces outside.

And then there’s the venue’s already-jam-packed concert lineup. There are 11 concerts, like Elton John and Chance the Rapper, scheduled at Chase Center in the coming weeks before the Warriors even make their game debut in October.

Rick Welts, Warriors president, told the media during a tour of the new arena that over time, the biggest contribution of the Chase Center to the city will be the entertainment aspect of the facilities.

The stadium was designed to accommodate smaller performances as well — the arena can be split in two by a dividing wall for theatre events.

But that’s only when the Warriors aren’t playing. When they are, the arena’s gargantuan scoreboard dangles above the center of the court.

Clocking in at nearly 10,000 square feet, it’s the largest scoreboard in the NBA.

There are a total of 15 screens on the center-hung display, with eight in the underbelly for fans sitting lower in the stadium bowl.

Other displays are scattered around the arena that will allow fans to keep track of players’ game stats, among other things.

And the team is also working on augmented reality technology that will show fans replay reels from different perspectives around the court, like from the coach’s point of view or from an athlete mid-play.

Chase Center’s 18,000 seat count is smaller than Oracle Arena. That’s in line with a growing trend in newer sports arenas that focuses on fewer seats and a smaller capacity.

The seats in Chase Center are larger than Oracle Arena’s.

And the roomiest seats, 26 inches of seat pitch to be exact, are located in the section reserved for members of the Google Cloud Courtside Lounges.

The Google Cloud lounges are just some of the luxury suites scattered around the arena. Chase Center's club suites are about twice the size of Oracle Arena's traditional suites.

The Google lounges are hidden underneath the bowl instead of traditionally sitting above the first bowl of seats.

The court can’t even be seen from the lounge, except by a live webcam of the court located in the seating area reserved for members.

Inside the club, which can be accessed by all members of the Google Cloud lounges, is a private wine vault.

Membership grants you access to every concert and every game held at Chase Center, as well as complimentary beer, wine, liquor, and two reserved parking spots in the Mercedes Benz garage.

The cost of such an amenity? Somewhere between $1.5 million and $2.25 million a year.

Above the court are 44 Oracle luxury suites available for unknown prices.

Inside one of them are a dining table, a sitting area, a kitchen, and partitioned court-facing seats to watch the game.

There are also sections of theatre box suites for groups of four featuring dining tables with seats behind a curtain and wall that face the court.

A hip bar sits in the vicinity of them.

Apart from luxury suites, there are corporate-branded clubs for certain ticket holders.

The JP Morgan Club, for example, has two rows of floor seats reserved, so those ticket holders have access to the club’s amenities, like complimentary beverages.

There’s also a Chase club with a similar structure …

… a Budweiser Legends club …

… and a United Airlines club.

All three of those clubs are open to any ticket holder during concerts but only for certain ones during Warriors games.

At the top of the northeast side of the stadium is the Modelo Cantina, where 140 ticket holders will have all-inclusive parking and food, among other perks.

Their seats are right beneath the cantina.

On the same side of the building as the cantina is the state-of-the-art Golden State Warriors player campus, which the media was asked to refrain from photographing.

The campus is devoted to the Warriors athletes and includes two courts, a hydrotherapy room, towering shower stalls, and a lounge with a kitchen run by a full-time, in-house chef.

But the athletes won’t be the only ones to eat well — eatery stands across the venue will sport local names, like Oakland-based Bakesale Betty. And while Oracle Arena had one kitchen servicing fans, Chase Center has nine.

The location of Chase Center gave officials a leg up when it came to designing a transportation system for attendees — a Muni line along Third Street already had a stop right in front of the new arena.

The Muni stop was historically used by those heading to the nearby UCSF. A name change was in order, of course.

There are also a bike valet for 300 spaces and a designated ride-sharing pick-up spot. For those opting to drive themselves, there are 950 subterranean parking spots.

There is also a new ferry terminal planned for a location near 16th street, but Welts told media members that there’s a funding issue plaguing its construction at the moment.

More than $14 million in new tax revenue is expected to pour from Chase Center, according to SF Curbed.

With the stadium's more spacious seating, technologically advanced viewing experiences, and over-the-top luxury suites, the Bay Area's tech bigwigs should be thrilled with their investment.