Where will Kentucky play its basketball game in London? A closer look at the O2 Arena.
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Kentucky basketball in London
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of the University of Kentucky’s men’s basketball trip to London to face Michigan on Dec. 4, 2022.
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It’s happening a couple of years later than originally expected, but the Kentucky men’s basketball team will make some history this weekend.
This will be the first Wildcats’ squad to play a regular-season game in Europe when the team travels to England for a matchup with Michigan in the Hall of Fame London Showcase on Sunday. The event was originally scheduled for 2020 but was postponed two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The setting for the matchup is the O2 Arena in London, and Sunday will also mark the first time the venue has hosted a college basketball game. Technically, the first college game in the arena will be played between Maine and Marist earlier Sunday — the undercard for the Hall of Fame showcase — but Kentucky-Michigan is the main event.
The setting is plenty worthy of a nationally televised game between two of the sport’s biggest programs.
Though the O2 Arena has never housed a college basketball game, it’s been home to plenty of high-level hoops. And it has its own unique history.
The arena was built underneath what was originally known as the Millennium Dome — a massive structure; one of the 10 largest usable-volume buildings in the world, in fact — over a four-year period of construction that began in 2003 and took until 2007 to complete.
The Dome itself, completed in 1999 to celebrate the new millennium, is one of the largest in the world and features 12 support towers shooting off its top in different directions, each 100 meters tall and perhaps the structure’s defining characteristic. After a year spent as the home of several attractions and exhibits to celebrate 2000, the building was eventually redeveloped, and the O2 Arena was built inside of the existing structure as part of that plan.
It has since become one of the biggest sports and entertainment — emphasis on the entertainment — venues in the entire world.
In 2007, during its first few months in its current state, the O2 Arena hosted concerts by the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Justin Timberlake and Bon Jovi. It was also the venue for a one-night-only performance by the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin — with Jason Bonham sitting in for his father, the late drummer John Bonham — and a run of 21 sold-out shows by Prince.
Stevie Wonder, the Eagles, Rihanna and Metallica all played there the following year, and 2009 was supposed to bring Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” spectacle — a residency featuring 50 shows — before the legendary singer passed away while preparing for the series.
The 2022 set list so far has included Diana Ross, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Doog, Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys, Billie Eilish and the Backstreet Boys.
In 2008, Chris Rock broke the Guinness record for largest comedy audience with a performance at the arena that drew nearly 16,000 spectators.
On the sporting side, the O2 — as it’s usually called — has been home to the 2012 Olympics gymnastics competitions, NHL regular-season games, big-time tennis tournaments, major UFC and boxing cards, and various other sporting events.
On Sunday, basketball will rule the O2 Arena. And it won’t be the first time.
The building was home to the elimination round and all the medal games at the 2012 Olympics, won by a Team USA squad that featured recent UK national champion Anthony Davis.
It hosted the NBA for the first time for an exhibition game before the 2007-08 season, but it has since been the venue for nine regular-season games, the most recent in 2019. All of those games drew capacity crowds of around 19,000 people.
This weekend, it’ll be Kentucky and Michigan in the O2 Arena.
UK Coach John Calipari, always a salesman for the Wildcats’ program and everything associated with it, has been touting the arena in the lead-up to Sunday’s matchup.
“That arena is the one that every star wants to perform in,” he said this week. “That arena. I mean, it’s it.”
This story was originally published December 3, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
