Volkswagen Arena

Volkswagen Arena is a football stadium in the German city of Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony. It was opened in 2002 and named after the automotive group Volkswagen AG. The Volkswagen Arena has a capacity of 30,000: 22,000 seats and 8,000 standing places. It is located in the Allerpark and is the home stadium of the football team VfL Wolfsburg.HistoryIn 1997, VfL Wolfsburg was promoted to the Bundesliga, the German premier league, which led the Volkswagen Group to reinforce its commitment to the club. Discussions on the construction of a new stadium began at the end of 1997 because the VfL-Stadion am Elsterweg did not meet the requirements of the Bundesliga. Construction of the new stadium finally began in 2001. The stadium was initially referred to as the "Arena an der Berliner Brücke" ("Arena by the Berlin Bridge"). At the time, the cost of the new stadium was estimated at 99.8 million DM. The constructor of the Volkswagen Arena was the Wolfsburg AG. Both the city and the Volkswagen Group each own half of the company. Alongside the start of construction of the arena, even more leisure and recreation projects were realised in the Allerpark, including the BadeLand Wolfsburg water park. The topping-out ceremony for the stadium took place in May 2002. The work was completed in December 2002 after a total of 19 months of construction.