An arena game may be unfolding.

In order to play the stadium and/or arena game properly, you need to have a competition between entities. The owners of the National Basketball Association’s Philadelphia 76ers franchise, Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment, want to leave South Philadelphia where they are tenants in an arena owned by Comcast and move to another part of Philadelphia. Chinatown is the destination but there is a problem. The area’s residents don’t want any part of an arena in their neighborhood and for a year there have been protests against the thought of building an arena in their backyard. Storefronts in Chinatown have signs in their windows, “No Stadium”. Now the state of New Jersey may enter the arena game. There was a report that top New Jersey officials and members from Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment have been having ongoing arena discussions for the past two months. If New Jersey was able to lure the 76ers’ ownership group across the Delaware River, the plot of land available would be in Camden. It would not be the first time Camden has been in play for the 76ers’ business.

In 2020, the present 76ers’ ownership wanted to build an arena in the waterfront area at Penn’s Landing but the proposal was rejected by the Delaware River Front Corporation. In December 1993, then owner Harold Katz was ready to cross the Delaware and move his team to Camden, New Jersey near the Ben Franklin Bridge which connects New Jersey to Philadelphia. Nothing materialized. Eventually Philadelphia politicians did pave the way for a new arena to be built on the south side of the city. Katz sold his team to Comcast in 1996.  In 2011, the Harris-Blitzer group bought the 76ers business and denied that they were going to take the team to Newark, New Jersey. The arena game could pit Philadelphia against Camden, New Jersey.

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Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com