{"id":548497,"date":"2026-03-27T13:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T13:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/548497\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T13:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T13:18:08","slug":"thunder-hold-groundbreaking-for-continental-coliseum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/548497\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder hold groundbreaking for Continental Coliseum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Thunder Continental Coliseum groundbreaking\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/WPMNQLWORFEQTCTEY7Y7SHC7DU.jpg\"  width=\"800\" height=\"418\"\/>A mix of more than 300 Thunder fans, civic leaders, architects and contractors \u201cgathered Thursday to celebrate\u202fthe start of construction\u201d of the team\u2019s new $1B arena in downtown Oklahoma City. Thunder\/YouTube <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-facilities \">A mix of more than 300 Thunder fans, civic leaders, architects and contractors \u201cgathered Thursday to celebrate\u202fthe start of construction\u201d of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/07\/16\/oklahoma-city-mayor-shares-first-renderings-of-thunders-new-arena\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/07\/16\/oklahoma-city-mayor-shares-first-renderings-of-thunders-new-arena\/\">the team\u2019s new $1B arena<\/a> in downtown Oklahoma City. The groundbreaking took place just\u202f48 hours\u202fafter <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/03\/24\/thunder-ink-naming-rights-deal-for-new-arena-with-continental-resources\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a naming rights agreement with Continental Resources<\/a> to open the venue <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/03\/25\/thunders-continental-coliseum-name-an-ode-to-roman-inspired-design\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">as Continental Coliseum<\/a>. The arena is \u201cunder a tight deadline,\u201d with \u201cexpectations it will <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/03\/11\/city-council-approves-contractor-for-900m-oklahoma-city-arena-job\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/03\/11\/city-council-approves-contractor-for-900m-oklahoma-city-arena-job\/\">open in time for the 2028-2029 NBA season<\/a>.\u201d Both Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt and Thunder Chair Clay Bennett \u201cpraised the arena design.\u201d Bennett also \u201cthanked partners\u202fin\u202fthe team\u2019s ownership group\u201d and \u201cpraised residents for supporting the team and construction of the arena.\u201d Bennett: \u201cThis is your day\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oklahoman.com\/story\/business\/downtown\/2026\/03\/26\/okc-thunder-continental-coliseum-construction-begins\/89317920007\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">OKLAHOMAN, 3\/26<\/a>). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mix of more than 300 Thunder fans, civic leaders, architects and contractors \u201cgathered Thursday to celebrate\u202fthe start&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[402,355,99],"class_list":["post-548497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}