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A stadium (plural stadiums or stadia) is a venue for (mainly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events that consists of a field or stage surrounded by a tiered structure that allows people to stand or sit and watch the action.

The race that covered one length of the stadion at Olympia, whence the name “stadium” originates, was the only event during the ancient Greek Olympic celebration for almost half a century, according to Pausanias.

Association football is played in most venues with a capacity of at least 10,000 people. Gridiron football, baseball, cricket, the different codes of rugby, field lacrosse, bandy, and bullfighting are all popular stadium sports. Concerts are held in many big sporting arenas.

“Stadium” is the Latinized version of the Greek word “stadion” (v), a unit of length equal to 600 human feet. Because feet vary in length, the length of a stadion is determined by the specific length selected for one foot at a given location and time. Although one stadion equals 600 feet (180 meters) in contemporary terms, it can refer to a length of up to 15% larger or smaller in ancient contexts.

The corresponding Roman measure, the stadium, was roughly 185 m (607 ft) long, but instead of being measured in feet, it was measured in passus, which was a distance of 125 passus (double-paces).

The English word stadium derives from the tiered architecture that surrounds a long Roman track.

Both stadiums and stadia are accepted as acceptable English plurals in most dictionaries.

The Stadium at Olympia in Greece, where the ancient Olympic Games were held from 776 BC, is the earliest known stadium. Initially, the Games consisted of only one event: a sprint over the stadium’s length.

Numerous Greek and Roman stadiums have been discovered in ancient towns, the most renowned of which being the Domitian Stadium in Rome.

Before hosting the first modern Olympics in 1896, the 1906 Intercalated Games, and certain events of the 2004 Summer Olympics, the unearthed and renovated old Panathenaic Stadium held attempted revivals of the Olympic Games in 1870 and 1875. The stadium was excavated and restored as part of the Greek national benefactor Evangelos Zappas’ legacy, and it was the first ancient stadium to be utilized in contemporary times.

The first stadiums created in the modern period were simple structures with the sole goal of accommodating as many spectators as possible. The earliest such buildings were erected in response to the enormous rise in popularity of the organized sport in the late Victorian era, particularly association football in the United Kingdom and baseball in the United States. The Lansdowne Road Stadium, designed by Henry Dunlop, who organized the inaugural All Ireland Athletics Championships, was one of these early stadiums. Dunlop erected the stadium in 1872 after being barred from holding athletic events at Trinity College. “With my own theodolite, I put out a quarter-mile cinder running path, laid down the present Lansdowne Tennis Club pitch, created a Lansdowne archery club, a Lansdowne cricket club, and, last but not least, the Lansdowne Rugby Football Club — colors red, black, and yellow.” Dunlop was able to use his technical abilities to construct a pitch coveted across Ireland by using 300 cartloads of Earth from a ditch beneath the railway to elevate the ground.

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