广州国际体育演艺中心

The Guangzhou International Sports and Performing Arts Centre, now branded Baoneng Guangzhou International Sports and Performing Arts Centre, stands at 2666 Kaichuang Avenue, Luogang Subdistrict, Huangpu District, next to Luogang station on Metro Line 6. Built as the basketball venue for the 2010 Asian Games, it is one of the first arenas in China designed and built to NBA standards. The scheme was designed by MANICA Architecture, the American practice regularly used by the NBA, with Guangzhou Design Institute as the local architect; the exterior is an elliptical, irregular flame-like curved form, earning it the nickname the Southern Bird's Nest. The site covers 65,000 square metres and the building 120,000 square metres, with 18,000 spectator seats, 60 VIP suites and 1,270 parking spaces. Sightlines and stand rake are optimised for basketball, and the bowl can be converted for ice events, concert staging and exhibition layouts. After the Asian Games the venue moved onto two tracks, sport and entertainment: Hunan TV's New Year concert, Faye Wong's 2011 tour and Jolin Tsai's 2015 tour all played here, and in 2024 the arena hosted close to 60 large commercial shows, earning the Guangdong Performing Arts Association's award for the most active performance venue of the year. In 2017 the Baoneng group acquired the operating company for about RMB 3.7 billion, and the naming rights have changed several times since, although the building's parameters and booking system have not. For promoters the advantages are a weather-proof interior, mature backstage and rigging infrastructure and capacity for five-figure ticketed shows; the constraint is that staging must work within the existing catwalks and load limits, and very large mechanical sets need a structural review in advance.