Flyers

The Sports Complex Redevelopment is Basically a Referendum on the Old School Philly Fan

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jul 11th, 2025 · 12:08 PM EDT

---

The Flyers and Sixers put out a joint survey on Thursday morning, asking season ticket holders and other fans on their email lists a series of questions about the new South Philadelphia arena. Do you like club boxes or loge boxes? How much would you pay for X/Y/Z? What would a potential fan plaza look like? Stuff like that.

It was the first step in gathering feedback on what the new building requires, and determining what the sports complex will look like about a half-decade from now, or maybe sooner.

Among the comments on our socials, this exchange jumped out:

This feels like an apropos snapshot of the situation, an illustration of the fan split that emerged when plans for 76 Place were announced several years ago.

There’s a broader discussion about what to do with the sports complex that pits two factions against each other, on one side the old school, “if it ain’t broke” fan who thinks less is more and just wants to drive down, tailgate, watch the game, and drive home. They don’t care about “premium experiences” and all of that, they just want a competent team, basic amenities, and affordable prices. The other faction is the modern fan, typically casual, who values gameday experience, having options around the arena, and upgrading an area that right now has Xfinity Live, the casino, sprawling parking lots, and nothing else.

Best case scenario? The little girl from the taco commercial. “Why not both?” Maybe it ends up that way, with preserved tailgating for Eagles and Phillies fans, while Sixers and Flyers fans get “optionality,” which is Daryl Morey’s favorite made-up word. You have something for blue collar fans and the rich lawyers as well, and everybody goes home happy. Hooray!

Here are some other replies to our story on the survey, which I think show an obvious pattern of thought:

• “Philly Sports Complex needs a full traffic redesign: smaller dispersed garages with multiple exits, dedicated one-way traffic loops, and timed lights that adjust for event flow. Stop pushing every car through the same three choke points.”
• “Open more than one exit when a game is over stop funneling entire parking lots towards one egress point.”
• “Driving and parking is a cluster. Without someone managing it every minute I don’t see it getting better.”
• “Just start winning. Don’t care if u play in the park.”
• “Just leave enough parking for tailgating.”
• “(needs) A ride share drop off and pick up area”
• “Leave enough parking for us out of towners though.”

You get the sense that people care less about the arena itself, i.e. what it might look like or contain, and more about how they’re going to get there and get back. A lot of the responses to our socials touched on the parking and driving situation, which is currently the worst it’s ever been. Traffic directing is nonexistent and it’s a free-for-all after every game. There are no pedestrian bridges and fans say the ride share scene after Phillies games is currently broken.

That sentiment might not reveal itself in the Flyers/Sixers survey responses, since season ticket holders and other similar customers received it, but if it does open up to the general public, I’d expect a lot of the above in a second round of feedback. There are also plenty of people out there who have no problem with the Wells Fargo Center as is, considering that Comcast just put $400 million into the recent renovations.

Keep in mind, there are a handful of wild card factors at play here. The Eagles haven’t committed to anything. They haven’t even done any media on this. We don’t know if they’re going to build something new or upgrade the Linc or whatever. Dan Hilferty has also mentioned several times the Navy Yard and Bellwether District, which is the area off Passyunk Ave where the oil refinery was dismantled. If expansion beyond the current confines of the sports complex is in play, maybe there’s room for everybody to get what they want. You get a modern and wonderful basketball + hockey arena with a fan plaza and mixed-use amenities, which benefits the neighboring Phillies, then the Eagles either relocate or attach themselves to the plan and we go 4 for 4 on this thing with plenty of room for tailgating at the same time.

Regardless, it feels like parking and driving, and by extension, tailgating, is at the forefront of fan minds, more than what the new arena should look like or what cool new shit it might have inside of it, but that’s just one person’s observation.