Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

Elvis and Roy Rogers played it in its first years, and a quarter of a million people came through the gates on the opening day of its first rodeo. Freeman Coliseum, at 3201 East Houston Street just northeast of downtown San Antonio, opened on 19 October 1949 as the Bexar County Coliseum - an Art Deco arena built after county voters passed a 1.75-million-dollar bond in 1945, later named for philanthropist brothers Harry and Joe Freeman who championed its construction. For half a century it was the beating heart of South Texas entertainment. The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo debuted here in February 1950 and called the building home through 2002; it was the city's largest indoor arena until HemisFair Arena opened in 1968, meaning generations of top recording artists - from Elvis through the Rolling Stones, Kiss, Run-DMC and Green Day - made their San Antonio debuts under its roof. The arena seats about 9,500 for rodeo and motorsports, 9,800 for basketball and up to 11,700 for concerts, boxing and wrestling beneath a 77-foot ceiling. It has housed pro hockey's Iguanas and Dragons, the WNBA's Stars during a 2015 season, decades of circuses, and the 2021 edition of the rodeo itself when the pandemic reshuffled venues. A near-50-million-dollar renovation completed in 2015 modernised seats, stage, sound and concourses while keeping the Deco shell. The Coliseum shares its grounds with the Frost Bank Center - the Spurs' arena, built next door in 2002 - and the Freeman Expo Halls, and the annual Stock Show still spreads across the whole campus each February, with the Coliseum hosting horse shows and the Texas Star Marketplace. Bexar County voters approved further upgrade funding in 2025. Practicalities: the campus sits off Interstate 35 and Houston Street with around 10,000 parking spaces, event traffic peaks hard during rodeo season, and the East Side location is ten minutes from downtown. Seventy-five years on, it remains one of Texas's great workhorse venues.