📍 Tampa, Florida
🏒 Home of the Tampa Bay Lightning

Situated along the waterways of downtown Tampa, Benchmark International Arena is a versatile, world-class venue that’s hosted everything from basketball to volleyball over the last three decades. But the arena has transformed into an epicenter for hockey – not just in Florida but across the entire country – as the home of the NHL’s immensely successful Tampa Bay Lightning. When the Bolts are in town, the electricity is palpable here in Tampa Bay.

Benchmark International Arena, which opened in 1996 under the regal Ice Palace moniker, holds just over 19,000 fans and maintains the league’s longest active sellout streak at more than 400 games. After a spell as the St. Pete Times Forum – and later the Tampa Bay Times Forum – the venue struck a naming rights deal with locally-based Amalie Oil Company in 2014. In 2025, a company called Benchmark International began sponsoring the arena.

Why the Lightning?
The team’s name was chosen due to Tampa’s notoriety as the “Lightning Capital of North America”.

Before you even enter the building, the gameday excitement is already buzzing outside. Thunder Alley, a large entertainment plaza outside the arena’s main entrance, is full of fans relaxing, chatting it up and pre-gaming at the brewery in the adjacent parking garage. The space also hosts watch parties when the Bolts are in the playoffs, along with occasional concerts.

Once inside the arena, fans have many food and drink options, ranging from PDQ and Lolis Tacos to Glory Days Grill and Wicked Oak Barbecue. The Budweiser Garden on the upper level is also a special place, featuring an outdoor rooftop patio that overlooks Thunder Alley and the bay beyond.

While its amenities are surely top-notch, Benchmark’s real thrill-factor is the amazing pregame show. Strobing, epileptic lights and thunderous sound effects create the illusion of being in the middle of a wicked summer storm. Electricity crackles from the Tesla coils that hang from the rafters. The largest digital pipe organ in the league emanates stirring and dramatic tunes that awaken the passion of the crowd. Finally, a highlight reel plays on the jumbotron, tailored directly to that night’s opponent by showing only Lightning goals scored against them. It’s all truly a sight to behold and is one of the most entertaining, well put-together spectacles in hockey.

Even the Zambonis are in on the excitement. In addition to the traditional “Fanboni” that roams the ice with a load of Lightning fans, the Bolts also have a “Zambabi”, a Zamboni for tiny tots that stemmed from a community effort in 2017 to raise awareness for children with cancer.

Of course, the Lightning’s success on the ice has helped keep the fervor and energy alive at their arena. Since their first season in 1992, the Bolts have advanced to five Stanley Cup Finals, winning it all on three occasions. They also clinched the Presidents’ Trophy in 2019, securing 62 victories to tie the then all-time record for regular season wins. Led to these accomplishments by legends of both the past and present, the organization celebrates their proclaimed “Lightning Heroes” through visuals all throughout the upper concourse, highlighting the likes of Steven Stamkos, Martin St. Louis and Victor Hedman.

The team’s back-to-back Cups in 2020 and 2021 are of particular note, as the Bolts navigated challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic – winning the 2020 title behind closed doors in Edmonton before raising the Cup on home ice in Tampa in 2021 – on their way to becoming an NHL dynasty that shows no signs of slowing their roll anytime soon.