In a region that has long stood for basketball excellence in France, the opening of LDLC Arena with a Euroleague game between ASVEL and visiting Bayern on Thursday caps off what club president Tony Parker called "an incredible human adventure."
ASVEL to unveil its new home, LDLC Arena, on Thursday
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Some seven years in the making, the arena will be among the most advanced in Europe.
The European basketball scene will change for the better on Thursday with the opening of LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne's new home, LDLC Arena in Lyon, France. The first full-scale event at LDLC Arena will be the club's Turkish Airlines EuroLeague contest against FC Bayern Munich.
Thursday's game will mark the first of at least 12 EuroLeague showdowns that ASVEL will play this season at LDLC Arena, bringing some of the biggest names in international club basketball to the new state-of-the-art venue.
LDLC Arena instantly becomes the largest indoor multi-purpose facility in the country outside of the French capital and among the most advanced, both in terms of technological and environmental friendliness in all of Europe. Not just a home for basketball, LDLC Arena will also be fit for tennis tournaments, conferences, concerts and more. It is located next to Groupama Stadium, the home of football club Olympique Lyonnais, as part of a program to develop the area into an entertainment and commercial hub for the region.
The opening of LDLC Arena is the latest chapter in Basketball Hall of Famer and club president Tony Parker's plan to cement ASVEL as a European power. ASVEL was already the winningest team in French basketball history when Parker first invested in the club in 2009. The relationship grew with Parker eventually becoming the club president, creating the Tony Parker Adéquat Academy, and in 2016 announcing plans for the new arena, which has now come to fruition.
"LDLC Arena is going to be one of the nicest arenas in the world,” Parker said in the local press this week. “The opening of the LDLC Arena is the culmination of a decade of having worked very hard with people who have trusted and followed us, an incredible human adventure. I will enter at the arena with great emotion. We have won many titles, we built the academy, but it is not every day that we can achieve a big project like this.”
The arena was built in such a way as to allow for 12,000 fans for basketball games and 16,000 for concerts. Its modular seating tier system and innovative seating bowl optimize the view from every seat, to bring fans as close to the action as possible. Moreover, the high level of the surrounding hospitality services aims to bring fans to games earlier and give them reasons to stay later.
LDLC Arena is an environmentally friendly project with sustainability at the heart of the design. It boasts 6,000 square meters of solar panels on the roof, nearly a third of the total area as green space, a large bird reservation to the north of the site, and an innovative double skin around the building to assist in regulating the temperature inside the arena, thus minimizing the need for climate control systems.
The future of ASVEL has arrived and you can experience it at LDLC Arena.
EuroLeague games coming to LDLC Arena this season:
November 23, Round 10, Bayern Munich
December 8, Round 13, Valencia
December 14, Round 14, Panathinaikos
December 22, Round 16, Olympiacos
December 28, Round 17, Real Madrid
January 4, Round 19, Zalgiris Kaunas
January 12, Round 21, ALBA Berlin
January 30, Round 24, Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul
March 1, Round 27, EA7 Emporio Armani Milan
March 15, Round 29, Anadolu Efes Istanbul
March 28, Round 32, AS Monaco
April 12, Round 34, FC Barcelona