Arizona State AD hints at major renovations to basketball arena

While there are many things that need fixing within the Sun Devil basketball program right now, the state of the arena has been a topic of discussion for several years now. Desert Financial Arena has been in serious need of renovations, and it seems as if those renovations might be coming soon.

Speaking with local Arizona Sports radio hosts Dan Bickley and Vince Marotta, new athletics director Graham Rossini hinted that progress on a multi-year renovation project could be in the works very soon.

“We’re prepared to make an announcement in a couple months. We’re probably looking at a multi-year renovation and significant enhancements into Desert Financial Arena. We’ve heard a lot of feedback from fans, and I’ve said this since day one, we’re going to make decisions driven by fan feedback and driven by the things that allow us to enhance the game day [experience]. “

The arena originally opened up in 1974 and has had extremely minimal work done in the decades since. Perhaps the biggest change was adding a wall to the upper deck seats in 2010 to shrink the capacity from 13,947 to 10,754 seats. The wall was removed in 2018 due to the sudden success of the men’s basketball team, but more renovations are badly needed.

Rossini’s predecessor, Ray Anderson, stated back in 2022 that Desert Financial Arena was in “dire need” of major renovations. Anderson had actually finalized a plan back in 2018 to significantly overhaul the arena and even expand it to add a hockey venue to the premises. Not long after, though, the plans were scrapped due to the unexpected financial hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once the university emerged from the challenges of the pandemic, though, their football team was hit with an NCAA investigation into recruiting violations that ultimately put Anderson’s own job in jeopardy, thus putting any renovations on the back burner.

Not long after Rossini was promoted to replace Anderson, he had this to say about Desert Financial Arena:

“It needs to be comfortable, it needs to be easy to navigate, it needs to be entertaining. The sound system, the scoreboard, etc. are all areas that we’re looking at. How do we make those improvements that are fan-focused in their mind?”

That was in late May of last year, and Rossini said then that he did not know a timeline for such a project to commence. Now, it seems as if the renovations are close to being fully mapped out, though they will take place in strategic installments over several years so as to avoid displacing the basketball teams, as well as the volleyball team, during that time.