Stadium characteristics
Stadiums represent a considerable expense to a community, and thus their construction, use, and funding often enter the public discourse.[3] Also, given the perceived advantage a team gets to playing in its home stadium, particular attention is given in the media to the peculiarities of each stadium's environment. Climate, playing surface (either natural or artificial turf), and the type of roof all contribute to giving each team its home-field advantage.Stadiums are either open, enclosed, or have a retractable roof. For retractable roofs, the home team determines if the roof is to be opened or closed 90 minutes before kickoff. The roof remains open unless precipitation or lightning is within the vicinity of the stadium, the temperature drops below 40 °F (4 °C), or wind gusts are greater than 40 miles per hour (64 km/h), in which case the roof operators will close the roof.[4]
Seating
With a peak capacity of over 100,000 spectators, AT&T Stadium has the highest capacity of any NFL stadium, while MetLife Stadium has the highest listed seating capacity at 82,500. The smallest stadium is Dignity Health Sports Park, which is hosting the Los Angeles Chargers for the 2017–2019 seasons, with a capacity of 27,000 seats; it is the smallest stadium to host a full NFL season for a team since a 25,000-seat City Stadium hosted its last Green Bay Packers games in 1956.In their normal configurations, 29 of the league's 31 stadiums have a seating capacity of at least 60,000 spectators; of those, a majority (16) have less than 70,000 seats, while eight have between 70,000 and 80,000 and five can seat 80,000 or more. In contrast to college football stadiums, the largest of which can and regularly do accommodate over 100,000 spectators, no stadium in the league currently has a listed seating capacity of more than 82,500. Teams rarely build their stadiums far beyond the 80,000 seat threshold (and even then, only in the largest markets) because of the league's blackout policy, which prohibited the televising of any NFL game within 75 miles of its home market if a game does not sell all of its non-premium seating. For this reason, until the blackout was suspended in 2015, the Los Angeles Rams cap capacity at the 93,607-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to 80,000 seats for most games. Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum, the stadium that hosts the Oakland Raiders, has over 60,000 seats, but the team has restricted capacity to under 57,000 in more recent seasons.[5] In the opposite direction, the league has a firm minimum on the number of seats an NFL stadium should have; since 1971 the league has not allowed any stadium under 50,000 seats to host a full-time NFL team (not counting Dignity Health Sports Park; there have been two exceptions to this: 45,000-seat Metropolitan Stadium in Minnesota was not replaced until 1982, and 40,000-seat Vanderbilt Stadium hosted the Tennessee Oilers for one season in 1998 after a planned two-year residency in Memphis was cu
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