Flyers

We Can All Rest Easy Now That 14 Women Have Been Added to One of the AI South Philly Arena Renderings

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Sep 10th, 2026 · 2:20 PM EDT

---

The goofiest story of the week involves the Flyers, Sixers, and arena renderings that were released on Tuesday morning.

Apparently people with way too much time on their hands analyzed the fans that were inserted into the images by artificial intelligence, and they determined that there was an alarming lack of diversity in the Flyers image specifically, which showed a lot of men and not a lot of women.

It appears as though the renderings have been stealthily updated:

The rendering showing Flyers fans arriving at the new arena in South Philly has been quietly updated on the project's website. The original (left) caught attention for a general lack of women. New rendering (right) appears to correct that https://t.co/WgzN0Avws6 pic.twitter.com/1AfH37OO0t

— katie krzaczek (@hashtagkatie) September 10, 2026

I don’t think the Flyers or Sixers made these. Probably came from the design firm, Populous. The architecture is being done by Moody Nolan Design. All four organizations have their logo on the renderings.

But the blame game is unimportant because this is not a big deal. There hasn’t been much complaining at all, which is nice to see.

The people who are offended by this kind of stuff are chronically online Heated Rivalry fans, who have been watching hockey for a grand total of one year. They’re in the Venn diagram with the anime avatars who got all bent out of shape because the Hurricanes used the term “spirit animal” in a tweet.

I’m willing to bet that 99 out of 100 female Flyers fans aren’t losing sleep over an AI throwing a bunch of men into a picture that’s supposed to highlight the new arena design. This isn’t the front of the Flyers’ 2026 yearbook. It’s not on the brochure handed out to season ticket holders. A robot put fans into a graphic and got the mix wrong.

In hindsight, someone could have had an intern go through each individual in the rendering and create a tally. That sounds kind of ridiculous, but you can never put too many sets of eyeballs on something.

For what it’s worth, I count one woman in the first rendering, and there’s an identical version of her one step up, facing the opposite direction:

Then, in the second rendering, I count 15 women up to the top of the stairs, where the people become a bit blurry and hard to discern. The duplicate woman was removed, so we have a +14 woman swing, from what it appears:

It’s all good now. All is right with the world.