United States
Pizza Hut Park
Pizza Hut Park is a multi-purpose facility, featuring a 20 000 seat stadium, built and owned by the northern Dallas suburb of Frisco in Collin County. Its primary tenant is Major League Soccer team FC Dallas, which relocated from the Cotton Bowl in central Dallas to the fast-growing suburb. The naming rights to the facility were acquired by the large pizza chain Pizza Hut whose corporate headquarters are in Addison, northern Dallas suburb. The stadium, which cost approximately $80 million, opened in August 2005 with a match between FC Dallas and the MetroStars, which ended in a 2-2 draw. Like many of the football-specific stadiums being built in the United States, it is expected that the stadium will make a significant amount of revenue by hosting mid-sized concerts, as well as various other sporting events, such as high-school American football games. The complex also has an additional 17 regulation size, stadium-quality football pitches, both grass and artificial turf, outside the main stadium. These fields are used as practice fields by FC Dallas, matches for the FC Dallas reserves squad, and also for hosting youth football tournaments and the like. Nicknames for Pizza Hut Park are PHP, the Hut, and the Oven, the latter referring to Texas' summer climate during afternoon games, and also because the field is well below ground level.
