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Located in downtown
Baltimore, M&T Bank Stadium and Oriole Park at Camden Yards are premier
stadiums in the National Football League and Major League Baseball. When
the Colts left Baltimore for Indianapolis after the 1984 season, local
leaders in Baltimore began discussions of building a new
football stadium to lure a team back to Baltimore. However, the
project took more than a decade to begin. In the mid 1990s, owner of the
Cleveland Browns, Art Modell, wanted a new stadium for his team to
replace the colossal and deteriorating Cleveland Municipal
Stadium. After failing to reach an agreement to build a new
stadium in Cleveland, Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore after
the 1995 season where local officials promised to build a new
state of the art football facility. Officials in Baltimore decided
to build a new stadium next to
Oriole Park at Camden Yards, home of
the Baltimore Orioles (MLB). While the stadium was constructed,
the Baltimore Ravens played at Memorial Stadium for two years (home of the Baltimore Colts prior to moving to
Indianapolis). PSINet Inc., originally purchased the naming rights
to the stadium, thus receiving the name PSINet Stadium. However,
after the 2001 season, the PSINet name was dropped and the stadium
was renamed Ravens Stadium. In May 2003, M&T Bank purchased the
naming rights for $5 million annually over 15 years.
The Ravens inaugural first game at their
new
stadium was on September 6, 1998. Over 71,000 purple and silver
seats fill the stadium. M&T Bank Stadium
consists of three main tiers of seats.
The
lower level of seats enclose the entire field. The club level of
seats circle the field, except beyond the end zones, where two
massive HD video/scoreboards are located. The upper deck extends
around the entire field. It is broken into four sections,
in order to allow fans to view the surrounding Baltimore area. The
exterior of the stadium is built in correspondence with its
neighbor, Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The facade consists of over
one million bricks, several thousand pieces of bluff colored
architecture precast concrete and prominent archways. M&T Bank Stadium
includes over 100 luxury suites in two levels, 8,196 club seats,
the Budweiser Backyard Bash, where fans can mingle and watch the
pre and post-game shows on big screen TVs, and a Ravens Team
Store.
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