The Syracuse Orange men’s basketball program will have a revised seating capacity starting in the 2024-25 season. The new seating capacity for men’s basketball is 30,219, according to a Syracuse spokesperson. That number is the result of new chairback seating which was installed this offseason. The previous capacity was 35,642.
The seating capacity number for men’s basketball is not set in stone, however. Syracuse has historically announced its largest crowds as capacity for men’s basketball and that number has changed multiple times over the years. The total seating capacity in the JMA Wireless Dome is 42,784. Basketball never fills the entire arena.
As part of the dome renovation project, Syracuse installed new chairback seating throughout the building this summer. The new seats are a departure from the metal bleachers which were installed when the dome was built in 1980.
Prior to the installation of chairback seating Syracuse set multiple records for attendance in men’s basketball. The current attendance record for an on-campus college basketball game is 35,642, set when Syracuse hosted Duke in 2019. Syracuse has had crowds north of 30,000 on 86 occasions. Syracuse will host North Carolina this upcoming season on February 15.
Syracuse will still have the opportunity to claim the largest crowd for an on-campus basketball game in any given season. The next largest college basketball arena by seating capacity is Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center with 22,090 seats while the next largest on-campus arena is North Carolina’s Dean Smith Center with 21,750 seats.
There are a total of 42,784 seats in the JMA Wireless Dome. Current seating consists of over 41,000 chairback seats, 1,366 theater seats in the 40 private box suites and approximately 200 seats for media in the press box
The JMA Wireless Dome is the only dome in the northeast and largest structure of its kind on a college campus.
