📍 Fishers, Indiana
🏒 Home of the Indy Fuel

The replacement of the historic Coliseum at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, Fishers Event Center has been the new heart of Indianapolis’ hockey scene since it opened in 2024. Home to the ECHL’s Indy Fuel, the arena is the result of a geographical shift in the team’s fanbase from the center city towards the rapidly developing northern suburbs.

Like its peers in Duluth, Georgia and Trois-Rivières, Québec, the Fishers Event Center is the anchor of a sprawling development consisting of shops, restaurants and apartments that’s located adjacent to a major highway. It has a capacity of around 6,500 fans for hockey, making it just a hair larger than its predecessor, which held 6,200 in its final form.

The Fuel’s former home, in fact, hosted almost all of Indy’s pro hockey clubs over the years. The sport has been played on and off in the city since the arrival of the AHL’s Indianapolis Capitals in 1939, the same year that the Coliseum was officially opened. Though the Capitals departed just 13 years later, it wasn’t long until hockey returned to the venue. During the forty-four year period from 1955 until 1999, the Coliseum was the intermittent home of the Indianapolis Chiefs, Capitols, Checkers and Ice. Then, an unrelated USHL franchise called the Indiana Ice made the arena their home from 2004 to 2012, departing when a round of extensive renovations for the aging barn were announced. Finally, the Indy Fuel were approved as an expansion team in the ECHL in 2014 and have played in the Crossroads of America ever since.

Since their move to Fishers for the 2024-25 season, the Fuel have experienced some amazing sellout crowds, a much better sight in the stands than the ever-dwindling turnouts they endured at the fairgrounds. Part of the seating bowl in Fishers features open-top suites and loge boxes around the perimeter, providing groups and VIPs a private hangout space that still has unobstructed views of the ice and enticing employers and clubs to schedule their parties alongside a Fuel game.

Echoes of the Coliseum also continue to ring inside the new Event Center, with some of the incredible pyrotechnics – fitting for a team with the Fuel nickname – having carried over to the pre-game introductions. In lieu of an inflatable dragon for the players to enter, the team now uses a gate-shaped videoboard that displays intimidating dragon imagery.

Though the Fuel haven’t had much success in the postseason, only making the playoffs a handful of times and never capturing a championship, the team’s predecessors have won a multitude of league trophies. With seven crowns being awarded to a variety of teams during their tenure at the old Coliseum, but never securing one of their own, the Fuel hope that they will soon acquire some new hardware to go along with their new digs.