Qualla: First Horizon Coliseum

First Horizon Coliseum: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Greensboro Mayor W.H. Sullivan first proposed the arena in 1944 as a memorial to soldiers who fought in the two world wars. Fifteen years later, on October 29, 1959, the new Greensboro Coliseum welcomed its first event with 7,100 seats - one of the largest arenas on the East Coast at the time. By 1993 it had grown to 22,000. In October 2024, First Horizon Bank paid for a ten-year naming-rights deal, and the building everyone in North Carolina had simply called the Greensboro Coliseum for 65 years became First Horizon Coliseum. The marquee changed. The basketball memory did not.

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First Horizon Coliseum: The ACC's Living Room

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Atlantic Coast Conference has played its men's basketball tournament here 26 times since 1967 - more than any other venue, by a margin no other building can plausibly catch. Geography explains most of it. The arena was within a seven-hour drive of the original ACC footprint a...

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First Horizon Coliseum: Wake Forest's De Facto Home

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For thirty years - from 1959 to 1989 - Wake Forest played a portion of its home schedule at the Coliseum because the on-campus Winston-Salem Memorial Coliseum was too small for marquee games. In practice Wake Forest played most of its ACC games at Greensboro. The opening of the m...

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First Horizon Coliseum: Hockey, the Hurricanes, and Empty Seats

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Greensboro has had professional hockey since 1959 - the Generals of the Eastern League, the Generals of the Southern League, then the Monarchs of the ECHL and the Carolina Monarchs of the AHL. Then came the strange two years. When the Hartford Whalers relocated to North Carolina ...

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First Horizon Coliseum: The King, Twice

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Elvis Presley played the Coliseum on April 14, 1972. Footage from that night ended up in his last film, Elvis on Tour, which won the Golden Globe for Best Documentary the following year. He came back to play here on April 21, 1977. Four months later, on August 16, he was dead. Th...

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First Horizon Coliseum: The Renovations

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Coliseum has been rebuilt three times around its original core. In 1968 Greensboro voters approved expansion from 9,000 to 15,500 seats; construction wrapped in 1972. In 1978 the Special Events Center was added on the side as the Exhibition Center, with three exhibition halls...

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