ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The backdrop of worn-out cadmium green seats and their black plastic underbelly created an eyesore as Manhattan senior guard Brianna Davis sank a jumper from the top of the key, scoring the first points of the 2025 MAAC Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships.
You wouldn’t know it by looking at the 14,000+ vacant seats, but Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall is filled to the brim with rich history.
Built in 1929, the nation’s first convention center hosted the Atlantic 10 Men’s Basketball Tournament from 2007 to 2012, and has played host to both the men’s and women’s MAAC postseason since the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season. However, it is almost least known for basketball.
The Superstars
The list of musicians who have held concerts at Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall is truly unthinkable. Generations of superstars have taken the stage, which sits unused well beyond the basketball court.
The Beatles. Britney Spears. Judy Garland. Bruce Springsteen. The Rolling Stones. Bon Jovi. The Who. Madonna. Lady Gaga. Phish. Jennifer Lopez.
Yes. All of those legends performed in the same venue in which Patrick Gardner led the No. 11-seeded Marist Red Foxes on a Cinderella-esque run to the championship game in 2023, before the clock struck midnight against Rick Pitino’s Iona Gaels.
Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall is essentially built for concerts, certainly not basketball. The floor is too spacious; it creates a logistical nightmare when it comes to seating.
Most of the stadium seating is usable, at least along the sidelines of the court. On either side behind each basket, some 10 rows of portable seating sit; one side is for media members and the other is for one of the competing schools’ band, dance and cheer teams.
It is by no means a shooter’s gym; the spacious background can easily mess with any shooter’s depth perception. It gets even harder to manage, given the fact that each basket presents a completely different background behind the hoop. On one side its rows upon rows of empty seats. The other side? The stage and its curtains, around 100 feet beyond the basket.
Second only to the concerts, Boardwalk Hall is known for boxing and wrestling. It has hosted almost every single New Jersey high school individual wrestling state championships since the early 1990s, but that’s just skimming the surface.
Wrestlemania IV and V took place at the historic Atlantic City venue. In Wrestlemania IV, André the Giant and Hulk Hogan’s headlining feud ended in a double disqualification. A year later, Hogan defeated Randy “Macho Man” Savage at the Convention Hall. Additionally, early UFC cards (43, 50 and 53) were held there as well.
The big name value of famous boxers to spar under the high arcing ceilings in Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall rivals that of the musicians. For starters, Mike Tyson had 13 bouts there, all of which ending in knockouts for Iron Mike.
In 1991, Evander Holyfield bested George Foreman in his first heavyweight title defense, in a 12-round unanimous decision; Floyd Mayweather Jr. won two fights there, and Sugar Ray Leonard had his final career fight in Boardwalk Hall as well.
Football?
Yes, you read that correctly. The site of the MAAC’s biggest basketball stage once fit a full, 100-yard football field on the same surface.
After five years of poor attendance in the cold winter weather of Philadelphia, the Liberty Bowl was moved to Atlantic City, where it was held in what was then named Convention Hall. Four inches of grass were rolled out onto the two-inch-thick burlap padding on top of the cement floor; on it, the Utah Utes demolished West Virginia, 32-6, in what became the first-ever indoor college football bowl game.
The Liberty Bowl was moved to Memphis, Tennessee, a year later, to the same location where it still hosts bowl games, over 60 years later.
Though it was the last time they’d host an FBS College Football game, it was not the final time a gridiron would be laid out in the convention center. Early in the 21st century, the Atlantic City CardSharks of the National Indoor Football League called the center home in 2004, then the Atlantic City Blackjacks of the Arena Football League played there in 2019 until the league folded after the season. In both leagues, the field was only 50 yards long, instead of the usual 100.
You name it, Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall has likely hosted it: basketball, concerts, football, boxing, wrestling, mixed martial arts, hockey, soccer and tennis. After nearly 100 years of history, the convention center is showing its age. But, those empty seats and the visibly deteriorating architecture inside and outside of the venue have truly seen it all.
Edited by Max Rosen
Photo from Cara Lacey
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