Lincoln Financial Field -

Address: 1020 Pattison Avenue
              Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19148

Home of: Philadelphia Eagles (NFL)
              Temple Owls (MAC)
              Philadelphia Union (MLS)

Date opened: August 3, 2003

Capacity: 68,532

Cost: $512 million

Lincoln Financial Field, located at 1020 Pattison Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 191481, is the home of the National Football League’s Philadelphia Eagles and the Temple University football teams. The stadium was opened in 2003 with the first game being played on September 8, when the team was beaten by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 17-0. Lincoln Financial Field is owned by the city of Philadelphia and the Eagles organization and cost either $512 million. The stadium was financed through the NFL, the city, the state, and the Eagles themselves. Another source of revenue was through the selling of the naming rights to Lincoln Financial for $139.6 million over a 21-year period.

Lincoln Financial Field is a huge upgrade from Veterans Stadium, the old ballpark that was shared by the Eagles and the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball. The new park is a football only stadium and uses a natural grass playing surface as opposed to the old Astroturf that was found as the Vet. Lincoln Financial Field also has a larger capacity at just over 68,500 people including 172 luxury suites and almost 11,000 club level seats. The fans always attended Eagles games in the Vet at a sellout pace, and it’s hard to think that a beautiful new stadium would do anything to change that pattern. The Eagles have been at or near a sellout for every game since the end of the 1994 season. Many of the seats at Lincoln Financial Field are as close as 60 feet to the action, a feature that many of the other stadiums around the nation don’t offer. Among the amenities at Lincoln Financial Field are two 27ft. by 96ft. video boards are located between the lower and upper decks in the end zones and a 10,000 square foot plaza for the fans of the team.

In April 2009, Lincoln Financial Field was listed by U.S. Soccer's World Cup bid committee as one of 58 stadiums to be potential sites for World Cup matches in either 2018 or 2022. In June 2009, it was announced that Lincoln Financial Field made the cut as one of 45 out of 70 stadium game sites under continued consideration. Lincoln Financial Field made the cut again when the stadium list was reduced from 45 to 32 on August 20, 2009.