History
Opened in 1972, the Coliseum occupies 63 acres (255,000 m²) of Mitchell Field, site of a former Army and Air Force base. The facility is located in an unincorporated area of the Town of Hempstead, within the Uniondale 11553 Zip Code. The New York Raiders, intended by the fledging World Hockey Association to be their flagship franchise, was initially slated to play in the brand-new Nassau Coliseum. However, Nassau County didn't consider the WHA a professional league and wanted nothing to do with the Raiders. Nassau County retained William Shea to get an NHL team to play in the new building. The NHL responded by hastily awarding a franchise to Long Island--the New York Islanders, which forced the Raiders to play in Madison Square Garden, in the shadow of the New York Rangers. The Coliseum was home to the New York Saints of the National Lacrosse League from 1998–2003, but the Saints became an inactive team in 2004. In 2007, it was home to four of the New York Titans National Lacrosse League team's eight home games (along with Madison Square Garden). In 2008, the Titans moved all of their home games to Madison Square Garden. Earlier, the Coliseum had hosted the New York Arrows and later the New York Express of the original Major Indoor Soccer League. Before that, the Coliseum had been home to the New York Nets basketball team of the American Basketball Association and later the National Basketball Association from 1972–1977. The Coliseum has also hosted first and second round games of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, most recently in 2001.
The Coliseum is also used for concerts, large exhibitions and shows of various kinds, as well as trade shows (44,000 square feet at the main arena, 60,000 at the Expo Center). Long Island native Billy Joel is one of the Coliseum's most prolific tenants, holding multiple shows at his hometown arena over the course of his tours. Billy Joel has a "retired number" banner, along with those of Islander greats, hanging from the rafters to commemorate his many Coliseum sellouts. New Jersey rocker Bruce Springsteen also played a memorable New Year's Eve concert at The Coliseum in 1980. Certain songs from the concert were used on his 1986 live album Live/1975-85. Both Phish and the Grateful Dead frequently played here and both have live albums recorded at Nassau Coliseum: the Grateful Dead (Go to Nassau), Phish (4-2-98, 4-3-98, 2-28-03 of the Live Phish Series). The Coliseum was also one of only two US venues chosen a few years earlier when Pink Floyd performed their limited run of shows in support of their 1979 album The Wall in February of 1980. One of the shows was filmed and bootlegged and has been heavily traded by fans for years. Eight years later, Pink Floyd recorded and filmed their concert film and album Delicate Sound of Thunder at the Coliseum in August of 1988.
The Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum hosted the first-third of the World Wrestling Federation's WrestleMania 2 in 1986 and SummerSlam in 2002, in addition to WWE's The Great American Bash pay-per-view event in 2008. The Coliseum has also hosted several WWE television shows like RAW, SmackDown!, HEAT, Velocity, Superstars of Wrestling, and Saturday Night's Main Event. The Nassau Coliseum hosted minor league hockey prior to the awarding of the Islanders franchise, a gimmick brought back in 2005, when the Islanders-affiliated Bridgeport Sound Tigers (AHL) played two "home games" at the Coliseum in the absence of NHL hockey due to the lockout. It originally had a capacity of 12,000 to 15,000 depending on the event, but in the early 1980s the maximum capacity was increased to around 18,000. It currently seats 16,234 for hockey, up to 17,760 for concerts and 17,686 for boxing and wrestling. Scenes for the 2007 movie Music and Lyrics starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore were filmed at the arena. On February 6th and 7th of 2008, the Spice Girls performed to two sold out crowds as part of their The Return of the Spice Girls World Tour. It was their first ever performance in the New York area as a five piece. During the summer of their Spiceworld Tour in 1998, the girls had played the Nikon at Jones Beach Theatre, PNC Bank Arts Center, and Madison Square Garden as part of their New York dates; but Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice) had left the girls right before the American Leg of the Spiceworld Tour (which kicked off on June 15th, 1998 in West Palm Beach.)
The time is now...