At 9:31 pm, the buzzer sounds, and the Chicago
Blackhawks' November 6th game against the Detroit
Red Wings ends with a 4-1 loss. Less than
twenty-two hours later, the Chicago Bulls

game against the Minnesota Timberwolves begins,
so within seconds the process of converting United
Center's floor from a hockey rink to a basketball
court begins. First up is the broadcast crew,
who quickly remove the remotely-operated cameras
mounted on the glass. Simultaneously, others

roll up the rubber mats that cover the ground
through the Zamboni tunnel so that ice crews
and others on skates can walk around safely.
Waiting behind them is the conversion crew—50-odd
people, some full-time United Center employees,
but most part-timers that come in after their

regular jobs. Much of the crew waits by with
the glass carts, which roll through the Zamboni
tunnel as soon as it's clear. These carts are
color-coded—red corresponds to the east glass,
black for the west side, and white for the
glass surrounding the benches in the center.

Removing the glass is as simple as applying a
suction cup, pulling upward, and grabbing the
connector between each pane. The process moves
fast—it takes just a few seconds per piece and,
if anything, it's limited by how fast the
crews can put the pieces away in the cart.

While this occurs, cleaning crews move through
the sections of seats on the two far ends of
the rink. These areas will entirely transform
over the coming hours, so their cleaning is
prioritized over the rest of the arena so
that work can begin. And they specifically

start on the west side since they'll soon need a
forklift, and the forklift can't currently access
the rink—the slope on the Zamboni tunnel is too
steep, so they need to remove the seats that are

currently covering the corner tunnel. In addition
to cleaning, others work on other small details
to prep these seats for conversion—removing
cabling, railings, and other small elements. Within just 25 minutes of the buzzer going off,
as the final few fans are still in the arena,

the last pieces of glass come down.
Up until this point in the process,
the crews have taken advantage of the coarse ice
created through twenty minutes of third-period
professional hockey to provide traction
as they work, but with the next stage of

the process involving covering the ice, it's now
time for the Zamboni to come out and resurface it.
After all, the ice is always there—from pre-season
through playoffs, no matter if there's a
basketball game or a concert, courts, stages,
whatever is always built on top of the ice,

as unlike essentially every other element needed
for any United Center event, laying down the ice
is a time-consuming process involving days of
careful layering and methodical placement of
lines, logos, and advertisements. It's just not
practical to lay down new ice for each game. And

maintaining NHL-quality ice is also no easy feat,
so as much as resurfacing the ice immediately is
about prepping it for its next use, it's also
about ensuring that it stays high-quality
even as an NBA game happens on top of it.
As the Zamboni does its work, part of the

Crew gets a brief break, but others continue work
on the seating. This is one of the more complex
parts of the process as the entire geometry
of the playing area changes from hockey to
basketball. An NBA court is less than half as long
and almost half as wide as an NHL rink, meaning

there’s plenty more room for seating. In fact,
all-in-all, 1,200 additional seats are installed
during the conversion. The main difference is that
seating extends closer to the playing surface,
far past the hockey boards, but there are
also other, subtler differences. In rink-mode,

the Zamboni needs access, which requires
having a large tunnel on one end. In addition,
players access changes between sports—with
hockey, tunnels extend directly to the benches
on one side of the arena, whereas in basketball
there’s access via tunnels on all four corners,

both for players and for those sitting
in courtside seats. So that’s all to say,
essentially the entire seating configuration near
the floor changes between hockey and basketball.
To achieve this in a matter of hours, the
area’s seating sits on telescopic platforms.

The individual seats fold down flat, then section
by section retract automatically. Once in their
compact state, crews use a lifting platform to
move them away from the wall—these essentially
operate like a hovercraft, shooting air at the
ground to reduce the effective weight of these

massive seating sections so that the workers can
push them around with simply their own strength.
This side, with seating extending further down, is
for hockey, whereas the side closer to the wall is
for basketball as in the basketball configuration
these seating sections only go down as far

as to the top of the boards, rather than the
bottom of the boards, to allow for more seating
past the boards given the smaller court size. For
now, the workers flip the seating sections around
so that the basketball side now faces the rink.
As the Zamboni finishes up, a few other assorted

off-rink activities occur—a couple people work to
remove the corner sections of boards, as these are
where the access tunnels will eventually be;
a few others mop the floor previously covered
by the telescopic seating; while one person
presses the button to automatically retract

the netting used to catch stray pucks.
Additionally, others go and stage the next
round of materials. During hockey games, all
the basketball components are stored in one
large room underneath one of the long sides of the
arena. The room is always organized the exact same

way so that each cart is accessible when it’s
needed—the glass carts, used first, are closest
to the door, whereas the pieces of the actual
basketball court, needed last, are furthest.
With the Zamboni now done, crews bring out risers;
some small seating sections; and rubber flooring.

One crew gets to work converting the benches where
hockey players sit. They start with filling in the
bench access tunnels with platforms, then affixing
seating on top of them. Each tunnel takes up the
space of sixteen seats, so considering
how close the seats are to the action,

filling these in adds up to thousands of
dollars of additional revenue. There’s
also space within what was the benches, so the
crews also place risers and seats within them.
As this goes on, others quickly work to cover
the rink in 530 different pieces of insulated

plywood flooring. Most of this is fairly
straightforward—equally-sized rectangles that fit together easily. Where it gets tricky
is towards the corners. To account for the curve, each piece is cut for its precise spot,
and therefore placing any of the 530 pieces

incorrectly will throw off the whole process.
The last piece is the trickiest—on this night, it refuses to easily slot in, requiring the crew
to remove some pieces and rework the placement as the rest of the crew watches on, waiting
to be able to get to the next step in the

conversion. But once in, to lock the flooring
in place, assuring it doesn’t slip even a bit, small spacers are hammered in around the edges.
Now, this point in the process is where the next steps sometimes diverge. While NHL hockey and NBA
basketball represent the core of United Center’s

programming, the arena also hosts concerts, comedy
shows, even the Democratic National Convention. Most comedy shows and certain concerts use United
Center’s in-house setup—using these materials, they’re able to set up a variety of simple
configurations. Larger concerts from bigger acts,

though, typically bring their own staging, so
the United Center conversion crew gets the rink converted to this point, then the tour’s staff
takes it from there. This can lead to some long nights. Not only do concerts last longer, but the
load-out of the tour’s equipment often takes two

to four hours before the in-house crew can even
start their conversion. And the timeline of when a rink conversion needs to be done by isn’t the
start of the next game, it’s actually around 10:00 AM when the visiting team is allowed to use the
ice for practice. So this leads to some long-hours

and late nights for the crew, especially when
the schedule leads to back-to-back-to-back conversions. Things get even more complicated in
playoff season as there’s often no knowing whether a rink or court is going to be needed for a game
until the previous game finishes. And there are

even some slight variations to the rink and court
setups that they need to pay attention to. When an NHL game is broadcast nationally, for example,
the broadcaster brings in additional cameras, and also sets up an additional broadcasting position
rinkside, which is why this glass sits here on the

glass cart on this particular night—it was taken
out since it was a national broadcast night. But this November conversion was, at
least relatively, simple—the rink to court transformation the crew is most used
to. Next in the process is measuring—they use

tapes and chalk to mark out where the corner
of the court should go. Considering it’s far smaller than the rink, getting its location
right is important to ensure the geometry of the seating that will surround it works too.
Then the court comes out. Unlike the rest of

the materials, the court itself is stored in a
standalone, temperature-controlled room. After all, it’s the most crucial, hardest-to-replace
element of the basketball setup, and there’s only one of them. Each piece is the same size, but
it still must be assembled in an exact order due

to the lines, logos, and advertisements painted
on top, so they’re each individually numbered. Part of the crew lays out each piece in roughly
the right place, while others follow behind and deal with the precise placement, using a mallet
to align the pieces as tightly as possible. And

precision is key—any slight misalignment with
the first pieces will compound the further they go on. A gap between flooring pieces is
unacceptable for NBA play, so if that happens they’ll have to go back and re-do their work.
While this goes on, work continues on the

seating. Now rotated, the telescopic seating is
extended out again, then these pieces of rubber are placed in between each section so that
there’s no gap. Unlike when in hockey mode, the front of these seating sections now only go
as low as the top of the boards, rather than the

bottom. The arena uses this additional height, and
the shorter length of the basketball court, to fit in additional rows of seating. Small sections are
rolled out by hand to fit in the corners, but the bulk of these rows is brought out by forklift and
carefully placed in front of the boards. Once all

in place, these seating units too will extend out
automatically all the way down to court level. On the long sides of the court, risers are
placed in front of the boards to provide a slightly elevated sightline for the backmost row
of courtside seats. These coveted seats are placed

one-by-one by hand, eventually fully surrounding
the court. The team also brings in the tables where league officials, TV announcers, broadcast
staff, and other personnel sit during games, as well as the digital advertising
boards positioned in front of them.

Setting up the hoops is one of the last steps.
First they flip the shot clock up into position, affix its support wires to the backboard, then
extend the stanchion up to its full height. From there it’s all about calibration—assuring the
hoop is level, the backboard is level, and that

The both are exactly where they’re supposed to be
relative to the court below. There’s also a quick
check that the rim hinges down under pressure as
it’s supposed to during a slam dunk, but if not,
there’s always the backup hoop in the storage
room that they can swap in at a moment’s notice.

At this point, only small, finishing touches
remain—dealing with the last few bits of wiring,
putting the last few seats in place, and
performing final inspections. With that,
the conversion crew is done. The clock just
hit midnight, meaning the entire process,

from the first panes of glass coming off to
the last seat getting positioned in place,
took almost exactly two hours and thirty minutes.
It’s an incredible feat, and they’ll do it all
over again the next night. After the Bulls game
they’re converting the arena into a stage setup

for a comedy show, then two nights later
the rink will return for the Blackhawks,
followed by another overnight conversion to court
for the Bulls. Across November alone, they’ll
convert the arena twenty-one times, working
tirelessly to bring Chicago its entertainment,

no matter which surface it requires.
As you can possibly tell, we actually filmed
this video in-person at United Center. This was a
really great opportunity that not only allowed us
to get this footage, but also all the information
that has allowed us to make, to my knowledge,

the most detailed video on how arena conversion
works on YouTube. Of course, flying to Chicago and
filming this was expensive, so I think this video
is also a testament to the benefits of injecting
a little more budget than the YouTube business
model can typically support—to be honest, we can’t

afford to fly out to film every video. But that’s why we’re a part of Nebula—the creator-founded streaming service that from the very beginning was focused on developing a business model that would support higher-budget projects from independent creators. The core of how that works is having a

paywall, which I know at first might seem bad, because, of course, you have to pay, but it does have its benefits. First, as a bonus, every Nebula creator uploads their normal videos there ad and sponsorship free, but really what it’s all about is the Nebula Originals. The

subscription fee helps us make all sorts of great, exclusive shows and movies—like for example, if you enjoyed this video, you’d probably enjoy our series the Logistics of X, which dives into the nitty gritty of how things like ski resorts or search and rescue or commercial fishing works.

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How Arenas Transform Overnight

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