Reading Royals
Rink: Santander Arena
Capacity: 6,500
Built: 2001
League: AHL
City: Reading, Pennsylvania
Home Of: Reading Royals
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: January 20, 2025 vs Jacksonville
Unique Arena: #107
ECHL Arena: #6
Santander Arena is nestled into the quaint, quiet downtown of Reading, Pennsylvania. Entering the neighbourhood, I remarked that it felt like a much better version of Wheeling, West Virginia. The building isn’t overly large from the outside, but announces its presence with a glass facade main entrance at one corner and nicely done red brick around most of the building. We found out that when the building was constructed in 2001, an old theatre was demolished to make way for it, and some of the old artifacts from said theatre were saved an incorporated into the new arena. The most glaring example of this is when coming into the main entrance you’re greeted with a large and impressive chandelier hanging above you before you climb a small staircase to the main concourse.
The rink in Reading reminded me a lot of Mississauga. It’s a 6,000ish seat rink with the concourse under the seats, about 2/3 of the way up the bowl. It is fairly spartan otherwise. One end had the first 8 or so rows collapsed for a rink side bar/food area which is something that’s become common when rinks don’t frequently sell out. While the rink is closing in on its 25th birthday, the seats are all brand new, just recently replaced. They are all very comfortable with padding and the seating itself is fairly steep, which provides great sightlines of the action.
Unfortunately, the day we were in Reading the game was at noon on MLK Jr Day during a Presidential inauguration, so it was A: a smaller crowd than normal that was B: mostly filled with young families. The result was the atmosphere in Reading was a total dud. However, I can’t hold that against them as some research shows that while they don’t sell out all the time, the crowds are usually much better than what we saw. Your experience may vary. Unfortunately, there were some downsides to Reading. The A/V production felt a bit amateur/mom n’ pop (not in a good way) and we noticed that the press facilities in Reading are not only very small but nowhere close to centre ice. There are suites running down each side of the building at the top of the bowl. While there is plenty of room to have suites in the ends, they do not have them there and the press box is relegated to being down near the corner. We also noticed that there is no centre ice camera either but instead one in each zone, kind of like you would see in football. The press facilities in this building feel like a complete afterthought.
One other noticeable thing was the team store felt like an afterthought as well. It’s a cramped space built out into the concourse (so traffic narrows up a lot) and getting in and out of it to buy our team pucks was a pain. Santander Arena isn’t a bad place to watch a hockey game. But it doesn’t impress at all either. It was one of those places where you question why did we drive so far to come watch a game here? I’m thankful it was an add-on during a big swing of rinks.
