Completed in 1999 to replace (and occupying the former site of) The Omni, at a cost of $213.5 million, it is home to the Atlanta Hawks, of the National Basketball Association,. The arena seats 18,371,anyway, the largest crowd ever for an Atlanta Hawks basketball game was in the 2010 NBA regular season (against the Los Angeles Lakers), where there was an approximate number of people of about 21,000. The arena includes 96 luxury suites and 2,893 club seats. For concerts and other entertainment events, the arena can seat 21,000. Philips Arena is among the busiest arenas for concerts in the world, having sold well over 550,000 concert tickets in 2007 and ranked as the third-busiest arena in the U.S. in 2011. It hosted the NBA All-Star Game in 2003.The first NBA playoff game in Philips Arena was in 2008, when the Hawks made the 2008 NBA Playoffs after an eight-season drought of missing the playoffs. It is nicknamed by media and fans "The Highlight Factory" due the numerous and frequent amazing dunks done by Hawks players.
The arena is laid out in a rather unusual manner, with the club seats and luxury boxes aligned solely along one side of the playing surface, and the general admission seating along the other three sides This unique layout is a vast contrast to many of its contemporaries, which have their revenue-generating luxury boxes and club seats located in the 'belly' of the arena, thus causing the upper deck to be 2-4 stories higher. The layout at Philips was done so as to be able to bring the bulk of the seats closer to the playing surface while still making available a sufficient number of revenue-raising club seats and loges. On the exterior, angled steel columns supporting the roof facing downtown spell out "ATLANTA" and the side facing the Georgia World Congress Center spells out "CNN." The arena adjoins the CNN Center.
