Information
Landmark: Santander Arena (Sovereign Center)City: Reading
Country: USA Pennsylvania
Continent: North America
Santander Arena (Sovereign Center), Reading, USA Pennsylvania, North America
Overview
In downtown Reading, Pennsylvania, the Sovereign Center-renamed Santander Arena in 2013-stands as a busy indoor venue that hosts everything from concerts to hockey games.The arena, built on the old Reading Railroad freight station site at 700 Penn Street, opened on September 6, 2001, and ever since has been Berks County’s go-to spot for pro sports, big concerts, and community events where the air hums with excitement.The building keeps its 1900s brick freight-house façade, its weathered red blocks still rough to the touch, and surrounds it with sleek steel and gleaming glass.Inside, retractable seats and sliding lower bowls let crews switch quickly from a 7,160‑seat hockey rink to a 9,000‑seat concert space-or clear it to a smooth, flat floor for an exhibition.The upper level curves in a horseshoe, lined with eighteen luxury suites, two lively party decks, and the PPL Electric VIP Lounge, all gazing down at the bright, cold sheet of ice.Behind the scenes, you’ll find six locker rooms, laundry and gear bays, a full-service kitchen, and a 70‑foot‑wide loading dock where four semi‑trailers can pull in nose‑first for arena‑scale tours.The Reading Royals, an ECHL affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers, serve as the arena’s anchor tenant, skating onto the ice in their bright blue jerseys.The Royals burst onto the scene in 2001–02, snagging three division titles along the way and hoisting the Kelly Cup in 2013 to the roar of the home crowd.Penn State Berks club hockey hits the ice here, alongside high school championships, figure-skating clinics, and weekend public skates where you can hear blades carving into the frost.For basketball games, the arena seats 5,500 fans, and its polished hardwood has hosted NBA G League matchups and the Harlem Globetrotters.From 2006 to 2012, the venue hosted the Reading Express indoor football team, and it’s also been the site of mixed‑martial‑arts bouts broadcast on regional sports networks, where the smack of gloves echoed through the crowd.Santander Arena pulls in A-list tours that skip smaller civic centers, yet feel more at home here than in Philadelphia’s venues fifty miles down the road.Elton John lit up the stage in 2005, Bruce Springsteen played a stripped-down solo set in 2014, Carrie Underwood brought her powerhouse vocals in 2019, and Tyler, the Creator shook things up in 2022.A floating roof truss and acoustic baffles, added during a 2018 upgrade, sharpen the sound, while that same project brought in a 32‑foot‑wide Daktronics center‑hung video cube and bright LED ribbon boards.From the sparkle of Disney On Ice to the roar of Monster Jam, family shows fill the calendar, while yearly traditions like the Berks Jazz Fest, the Reading Holiday Parade’s indoor kickoff, and Berks Catholic’s graduation keep the arena rooted in the heart of the community.ASM Global runs the arena under a lease with the Berks County Convention Center Authority, bringing roughly $35 million a year into the local economy-money that keeps nearby restaurants and shops buzzing.Over four hundred part-time event staff join a full-time team of forty, and on show nights, nearby restaurants often see sales jump by double digits, with tables filling before the lights even dim.The attached Santander Performing Arts Center-once the Rajah Theatre just two blocks away-joins with its partner venue to offer bundled ticket deals and conference space, from stage shows to panel rooms with bright red curtains.The main entrance sits on Penn Street, beneath a steel-and-glass canopy that glows in team colors when the game-night lights click on.Visitors will find two banks of escalators, elevators reaching every floor, and wide seating platforms with plenty of room-more than the ADA calls for.Free Wi-Fi covers the concourse, and a 5G antenna array keeps mobile ticketing and cash-free concessions running smoothly-fast enough to buy a soda before your train pulls in.You can park in the nearby South Penn or Poplar–Walnut garages, and if you’re going car-free, the BARTA bus station is just a block east, past the corner café.In 2023, a sustainability retrofit swapped out the warm glow of halogen house lights for efficient LEDs, added low-flow plumbing, and equipped the mechanical plant with heat‑recovery chillers expected to trim annual energy use by 20 percent.The Royals have added a synthetic-ice shooting lane and a video theater with crisp seventy-inch telestration screens, bringing their training space in line with the new ECHL Player Safety standards.From championship hockey games and packed concerts to blood drives, job fairs, and high school graduations, the Sovereign Center-now Santander Arena-serves as Reading’s living room, a place where the clang of its industrial past echoes through modern entertainment and fuels the city’s economic energy.
