The Fiserv Forum Hosted Its First Basketball Game, We Were There

MILWAUKEE, WI -- On Wednesday, Oct. 3, the Milwaukee Bucks hosted the Chicago Bulls in an NBA preseason game in the new Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. It was the first game in the new Bucks arena, and Patch.com's Milwaukee Regional Editor Scott went to check it out.

Scott's been to a bunch of NBA and college basketball games at the Bradley Center - the Bucks home from 1988 to 2017. Here are 5 observations from Scott from the first-ever NBA game at the new Fiserv Forum.

1) It's a more comfortable place to watch a basketball game. Now, I know there's only so many ways to slice-and-dice the seating bowl to a sporting event, but when compared with the Bradley Center, the Fiserv Forum on balance, feels more comfortable from a fan perspective.

For starters, the lower bowl is much bigger than the Bradley Center 10,000 seats to only 6,000 seats. The rake of the lower bowl makes you feel like you're closer to the action without making you feel like you're climbing up a steep flight of stairs. The larger lower bowl drastically improves the sightlines.

The seats are about the same size as those of the Bradley Center, however you're not sitting on the ridiculously-uncomfortable folding chairs near the court. In addition, the regular seats feature much better fabric.

The upper levels are markedly different as well with the Fiserv Forum representing a huge upgrade over the Bradley Center. The upper deck of the Bradley Center was downright dangerous, with a steep incline all the way up to the uppermost reaches of the venue. The Fiserv Forum does away with much of that with a significantly smaller upper ring and a more modest incline.

2) It's a much better place to hear a basketball game. One of my biggest problems with the Bradley Center were horrible acoustics. The atmosphere sounded tinny, and announcements over the public address system resonated and echoed throughout the venue, making you feel like you were in an echo chamber.

In the Fiserv Forum, the designers went through great pains to improve the acoustics. For starters, the fabric used in the seating was designed to absorb more sound than its Bradley Center counterpart.

The design of the interior, with its curved walls, and a whole bunch of technical stuff that's above my pay grade, seem to direct the sound down toward the court, giving it a dynamic range that will rattle your rib cage, create ripples in your beverage without leaving your ears ringing.

3) It's way easier to walk around. The Fiserv Forum's concourses are bright and open, which means you won’t get stuck dodging concession stand lines just to get from one place to another. There are actually places to hang out away from the game as well without missing any of the action.

Really nice flat-screen TVs seem to ring the concourse, keeping you abreast of the game taking place in the arena, while also giving you a live look-in at other regional games even while you're waiting for a beer, some pizza or Chick Fil' A.

4) It's way easier to buy food. At the Bradley Center, when you wanted to get something to eat, you left your seat and either walked down the ramp to the concourse to the concession stand or one of those built-in food service counters.

At the Fiserv Forum, they've done a couple things that I really liked: for one, they widened the exit ramps and integrated beer counters and dining spots right into the ramp replete with open-bulb mood lighting and bar stools. It keeps that congregation off the concourse while creating a somewhat intimate space.

The second thing they did was place the main food counters in a Mitchell International Airport-sized concourse. The lines wrap in-and-out of a designated rope line, which means you don't have the old Bradley Center food pileup that often happened at halftime.

5) The design is really catchy. When the Bradley Center was opened in the late 1980's it was considered a glittering $75 million gift from the Jane and Lloyd Petit family. Not to knock that, however the Fiserv Forum's modern stylings make the Bradley Center feel downright institutional.

The Fiserv Forum seems to have capitalized on our generation's preoccupation with midcentury modern design trends: flat panels of earth tones, wood grain and natural materials; an emphasis on the horizontality of design with sweeping curves and organic spaces; and a favoring of lower ceilings with walkable space over dizzying verticality wherever you go.

Gone are the Bradley Center's 80's-era cool tones in favor of warmth, high-key cream and white accents and chic LED lighting schemes intermixed with Edison-era open-bulb fancy carbon filament bliss.

Bottom Line

Do you remember walking into Miller Park for the first time after years of watching Brewer games in old County Stadium? Yeah, you won't feel like that when you walk into the Fiserv Forum. The forum is nice, but it's not the multi-generation-gap leap from the 1950s into the 21st Century. That said, you'll feel like you've walked from your cookie-cutter 2-story colonial in the suburbs into a custom midcentury modern home that's been tricked out with all the latest design trends.

File Photo