The Great Western Forum

Lore & Background

When the Kings first skated into The Forum in the 1993–94 season, they were a team still shedding the identity of a small-market franchise that had played at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena for twelve years. The Forum was enormous by comparison—built to host NBA basketball, major concerts, and wrestling spectacles—and the Kings had to fill it. What they did, season after season, was not with trophies but with presence. The lower bowl became a cauldron. The upper deck, often sparsely populated on a Tuesday in November, would ignite on a Saturday in March when a young winger buried a one-timer from the blue line and the sound rolled off the concourse like a physical force.

The Forum's architecture is part of its legend. The high, curved ceiling and the wide sightlines meant that the crowd was never close to the ice in the way a smaller arena demands. That distance created a unique acoustic: the roar built slowly, crested, and then fell in a long, resonant decay. Fans learned to time their chants to that rhythm. The purple and gold of the Kings' colors, projected across twenty thousand seats, turned the bowl into a single living organism that pulsed with every shift change.

By the late 1990s, the Forum was aging. The Kings were a playoff regular, and the building's grandeur had begun to feel like a relic. The 1999 move to the downtown Staples Center marked the end of an era. For many longtime fans, the last home game at the Forum carried a grief that transcended the final score—a farewell to the building that had taught them what it meant to root for a team that was, for so long, simply trying to be good enough.

In Their Own Story

It was a Thursday in February, and the Kings were up by one in the third. The Forum's lights hummed their low, electric hum above the glass. In section 114, a man in a faded '96 jersey pressed his forehead against the plexiglass, breath fogging the surface, watching the puck ping back off the boards. Around him, twenty thousand people held their collective breath. Then the slap shot. The crack. The net rippling. The sound that followed was not a cheer so much as an exhalation—a long, shuddering release that bounced off the dome and came back down into the bowl. The man in 114 pulled his forehead off the glass, wiped the fog with his sleeve, and whispered something to no one. Above him, the scoreboard glowed purple and gold, and the Forum settled back into its quiet, electric hum, waiting for the next period.

Reader's Guide

You pull into The Forum parking lot on a game night and the building looms—massive, rounded, almost industrial in its scale. The dome catches the last of the afternoon sun and throws it back in a flat, warm glow. Inside, the concourse is wide and echoing, the smell of hot dogs and floor wax mingling with the cold bite of the ice drifting through the tunnel.

The bowl is the thing. Twenty thousand seats stacked in a gentle curve, the lower deck close enough to hear the snap of a stick, the upper deck far enough to feel the crowd as a single body. Purple and gold flood the seats when the Kings take the ice, and the color hits your peripheral vision before your brain registers it.

The noise at The Forum was different from a smaller arena. It built in layers—the stick-on-ice crack, the referee's whistle, then the slow swell of twenty thousand voices rising together. A goal didn't just make noise; it made pressure. Your chest vibrated. The ceiling seemed to drop.

Rituals were simple and sacred: the pregame anthem, the section chant, the collective groan on a turnover. Fans in the lower bowl leaned on the glass, breath fogging it, pointing, screaming. The upper deck swayed as one.

By the final seasons, the building showed its age—scuffed paint, a few cracked seats, the scoreboard flickering. But the ice was still fast, the boards still rang, and the feeling of being inside a cathedral built for your team remained. When the Kings left for downtown in 2017, the Forum went quiet. The dome still stands. The seats still wait. But the hum is gone.

Did You Know?

• The Forum was originally named after Great Western Savings & Loan, a California-based financial institution, before the naming-rights deal ended and it became simply 'The Forum.'
• The Kings played at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena from their 1967 inception until 1979, making The Forum their second home as a franchise.
• The Forum simultaneously hosted the Los Angeles Lakers (NBA) from 1967 to 1999, meaning Kings and Lakers fans shared the same building