The arena seats just under two thousand people, a fraction of the venues used by the sport's biggest national leagues. Its owners have been offered money to expand twice. Both times, they turned it down.
What keeps the seats full, season after season, isn't scale — it's proximity. Fans can see the players' hands on the keyboard from the upper rows, something the largest arenas in the sport can no longer offer without a jumbotron in between.
Staying small on purpose
The venue's general manager says the calculus is simple: a bigger room means a bigger nut to cover every night, and a worse view for everyone in it. Local season-ticket holders, some of whom have held their seats since the arena's first year, back her up.
Players who've competed in both settings describe something the arena has that stadium-sized venues don't: a crowd close enough to hear its own reaction, in real time, to a play that just happened.