Sapporo Dome Stadium

Sapporo Dome (札幌ドーム, Sapporo Domu) is a stadium located in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, and is primarily used for baseball and association football. It is the home field of the baseball team Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and the association football club Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo. It is one of the planned football venues for the 2020 Summer Olympics, was the venue for the opening ceremony of the 2017 Asian Winter Games, and was used for 2 matches of the 2019 Rugby World Cup. The stadium was previously a venue of the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

History

Sapporo Dome opened in 2001 with 41,580 seats. The stadium hosted three games during the 2002 FIFA World Cup, Germany vs Saudi Arabia, Argentina vs England and Italy vs Ecuador; all three matches were in the first round.

The Dome hosted the opening ceremonies of the 2007 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships on February 22 and hosted the closing ceremonies of the championships on March 4. It also made history as being the first venue where both indoor and nighttime skiing events took place for the first time on a world championship or Winter Olympic Games level with competitions in the cross-country skiing sprints (men's and women's individual, and men's and women's team) and the cross-country portion of the 7.5 km sprint event in the Nordic combined. In order to generate snow, the stadium used its turf conversion hovering system to facilitate the snow making process for the skiing competitions. The opening ceremony featured Maki Ohguro, a local artist from Sapporo, Japanese drum demonstrations and other performances paying tributes to local customs and traditions. For the championships, seating capacity was reduced to 30,000.

The Dome was used as a super special stage in Rally Japan in both 2008 and 2010.

In late 2009, renovations with the possibility of increasing the capacity up to 53,796 were finished. These renovations also included space for more food outlets, an extra video screen, two extra changing rooms (to accommodate preseason matc

This page also has a version in other languages :  Саппоро Доум Стадион (russian)