Fifth Third Stadium, known as Kennesaw State University Stadium until 2013, is a stadium near

Kennesaw, Georgia Kennesaw is a suburban city northwest of Atlanta in Cobb County, Georgia, United States, located within the greater Atlanta metropolitan area. Known from its original settlement in the 1830s until 1887 as Big Shanty, it became Kennesaw under i ...

, that is primarily used as the home for the Kennesaw State Owls football team as well as the KSU women's soccer and

women's lacrosse Women's lacrosse (or girls' lacrosse), sometimes shortened to lax, is a field sport played at the international level with two opposing teams of ten players each (12 players per team at the U.S. domestic level). Originally played by indigenous ...

teams. It was built as a

soccer-specific stadium A soccer-specific stadium, mainly in the United States and Canada, is a sports stadium either purpose-built or fundamentally redesigned for soccer and whose primary function is to host soccer matches, as opposed to a multi-purpose stadium whic ...

and opened May 2, 2010, with the first match played on May 9. The facility is the result of a public-private partnership between

Kennesaw State University Kennesaw State University (KSU) is a public research university in the U.S. state of Georgia with two campuses in the Atlanta metropolitan area, one in the Kennesaw area and the other in Marietta on a combined of land. The school was founded ...

and the now-defunct Atlanta Beat of

Women's Professional Soccer Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) was the top-level professional women's soccer league in the United States. It began play on March 29, 2009. The league was composed of seven teams for its first two seasons and fielded six teams for the 2011 ...

. The stadium's seating capacity is 10,200. It has a stage at one end to facilitate concerts and can hold up to 16,316 for that purpose.

Stadium

The bowl-shaped stadium –– built on of land east of the Chastain Road exit off of Interstate 75, about a mile from Kennesaw State’s main campus –– is the latest addition to the KSU Sports & Entertainment Park, which opened in fall 2009 to expand the university’s facilities for intramural and club sports. The stadium will help showcase varsity athletics at KSU, which recently completed its transition into

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest division of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athlet ...

. The on which the stadium sits is part of acquired for the university by the KSU Foundation in 2008 and 2009, which now are being developed into athletics facilities for the university’s growing student population. The remaining area around the new stadium has been developed into soccer fields, intramural fields, a rugby field, and a track and nearly of nature and hiking trails.

Football

In September 2010, KSU announced that it planned to launch a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

program at the Division I FCS level in 2014, and would use the stadium as its home field. On February 14, KSU announced that the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia approved the University’s request to add football to its 17-sport NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletics program. On September 12, 2015, Kennesaw State played their first home football game at Fifth Third Bank Stadium with 9,506 in attendance, defeating the Edward Waters Tigers, 58-7.

Soccer

The facility was home to the Atlanta Beat in 2010 and 2011, and hosted the 2010 WPS All-Star Game on June 30. Pro soccer returned when Atlanta United 2 of the

USL Championship The USL Championship (USLC) is a men's professional association football, soccer league in the second tier of the United States soccer league system#Men's leagues, United States league system. It is organized by the United Soccer League (USL) a ...

moved to the stadium for the 2019 season. The stadium hosted a 2019 CONCACAF Champions League match where

Atlanta United FC Atlanta United FC is an American professional soccer club based in Atlanta. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Eastern Conference. Domestically, the club has won one MLS Cup, one U.S. Open Cup, and one Eastern ...

defeated C.S. Herediano 4–0 on February 28, 2019, and a U.S. Open Cup match between Atlanta United and Chattanooga FC on April 20, 2022, which Atlanta won 6–0. Atlanta United have won all eight of the matches the team has played at the stadium.

Rugby

The stadium hosted a round of the 2013–14 IRB Women's Sevens World Series on February 15–16, 2014. The second half of a home-and-home series of rugby matches between the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

as part of the

qualification Qualification may refer to: Processes * Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS), a competitive contract procurement process established by the United States Congress * Process qualification, ensures that manufacturing and production processes can ...

for the

2015 Rugby World Cup The IRB 2015 Rugby World Cup was the eighth Rugby World Cup, the quadrennial rugby union world championship. The tournament was hosted by England from 18 September to 31 October. Of the 20 countries competing in the World Cup in 2011, there was ...

in England, was played here on March 29, 2014. The United States won the match 32–13 to win the qualification spot on a two-match aggregate of 59–40. The stadium hosted the

when they played

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

on June 17, 2017. The Eagles lost to Georgia 17–21.

USA Eagles Internationals

''USA scores displayed first.''

Renovation and renaming

Through a multimillion-dollar, multi-year sponsorship agreement with the

Fifth Third Bank Fifth Third Bancorp is a bank holding company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is the parent company of Fifth Third Bank (5/3 Bank), which operates 1,100 branches and 2,400 automated teller machines, which are located in 11 states: Oh ...

's Georgia regional office, KSU Stadium was renamed Fifth Third Bank Stadium with the addition of Division I football in February 2013. Campus facility plans in 2016 suggested expanding the stadium's capacity, but as of June 2018, Kennesaw State University had not funded the plan.

Top 10 attendance records

References

List of NCAA Division I FBS football stadiums The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). As of the 2024 season, there are 1 ...

Notes and references

External links

New Soccer Stadium

Stadium information
from Atlanta Beat
Football team announcement
{{coord, 34.028967, -84.567626, display=t, type:landmark College football venues in Georgia (U.S. state) College lacrosse venues in the United States College soccer venues in the United States Atlanta Beat (WPS) Kennesaw State Owls football Major League Lacrosse venues Premier Lacrosse League venues Rugby union stadiums in the United States MLS Next Pro stadiums Women's Professional Soccer stadiums Lacrosse venues in the United States Soccer venues in Georgia (U.S. state) Buildings and structures in Cobb County, Georgia 2010 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)