Historic Crew Stadium

Historic Crew Stadium, previously known as Columbus Crew Stadium and Mapfre Stadium, is a soccer-specific stadium in Columbus, Ohio, United States. It primarily served as the home stadium of the Columbus Crew of Major League Soccer from 1999 until 2021, when the team moved to Lower.com Field. The Historic Crew Stadium is the current home of the Crew's training facility, the OhioHealth Performance Center and MLS Next Pro team Columbus Crew 2. Historic Crew Stadium is also the site of a variety of additional events in amateur and professional soccer, American football, lacrosse, and rugby, and is a regular site for outdoor concerts due to the permanent stage in the north end zone.

Built in 1999, it was the first soccer-specific stadium built by a Major League Soccer team, starting an important trend in MLS stadium construction. The stadium was named for Madrid-based Mapfre Insurance after the company signed a 5-year sponsorship agreement announced on March 3, 2015. In December 2020, the deal expired and the Crew renamed the stadium. The listed seating capacity is 19,968. In 2015, Mapfre Stadium and Director of Grounds Weston Appelfeller were honored with the prestigious Field of the Year award by the Sports Turf Managers Association (STMA) for the professional soccer division.

History

The Crew played their first three seasons at Ohio Stadium on the campus of the Ohio State University. During games, large sections of the stadium were blocked off to reduce capacity from approximately 90,000 to 25,243. Although the Crew enjoyed success at Ohio Stadium during their tenure there, the large seating capacity and limitations to the field size made the stadium ill-suited for soccer. Additionally, Ohio Stadium lacked permanent field lights. These problems, along with planned renovations to Ohio Stadium, which began in 1999, were all factors in the development of Historic Crew Stadium.

This page also has a version in other languages :  Хисторик Крю Стэдиум Стадион (russian)