The Upper Deck
Where the blue and red noise hits the rafters and the building shakes.
The Upper Deck refers to the upper-bowl seating area at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, home of the Columbus Blue Jackets. While the arena itself opened in 2005, the cultural identity of the upper deck stretches back to the team's earliest seasons at the Civic Center and the Coliseum, where the loudest, most committed fans always gravitated to the top rows.
In Blue Jackets lore, the Upper Deck is less a seat assignment and more a state of mind: the section where fans stand for full periods, wave towels, chant in unison, and treat every shift as a personal cause. It is the engine room of the building, the place where a 3-2 overtime win feels like a coronation and a 1-0 loss feels like a war story already being told at the bar.
- Venue
- Nationwide Arena, Columbus, Ohio
- Team
- Columbus Blue Jackets (NHL expansion franchise, 2000)
- Arena opened
- 2005
- Prior venues
- Columbus Civic Center (1999–2000), Columbus Coliseum (2000–2005)
- Team colours
- Blue and Red (inspired by the Ohio state flag)
- Cultural role
- Upper-bowl fan section; the loudest, most vocal area in the building
Lore & Background
The Blue Jackets arrived in Columbus as a 2000 expansion team, and from the very first puck drop at the Civic Center, a distinct fan identity coalesced in the upper rows. Those early seasons were lean—win-loss records that would make a veteran GM wince—but the upper deck fans treated every shift as sacred. They built chants, they brought flags, they turned a mid-major market into a place where an NHL team could feel like a community institution within two years.
When the team moved to the Coliseum and then to the gleaming new Nationwide Arena in 2005, the upper deck culture migrated with them, adapting to new sightlines and new acoustics but never losing its core: proximity to the ice is for comfort, but the upper deck is for conviction. The fans up top don't need to be close to the boards; they need the whole building to feel what they feel. The roar that starts in the upper rows and cascades down through the lower bowl is the sound Columbus associates with its team.
Through the Rick Nash era, the rebuilding years, and the slow climb back into playoff contention, the Upper Deck has been the constant. Rosters turn over, coaches come and go, but the upper deck keeps its own continuity—seasons measured not in standings but in how many nights the building truly shook. For the die-hards up top, the Blue Jackets are not a franchise; they are a promise the city made to itself in 1999, and the Upper Deck is where that promise is kept, shift by shift, season by season.
In Their Own Story
The scoreboard reads 1-1, third period, four minutes left. The lower bowl is quiet, polite, waiting. Up in the Upper Deck, nobody is waiting. A sea of blue and red rises as one, sticks and towels and phone flashlights all pointing at the ice like a single organism. The center drops the puck, a Blue Jackets winger wins the draw, and the sound that erupts from the upper rows is not a cheer—it is a physical force, a wall of noise that makes the glass vibrate and the Zamboni parked in the corner tremble on its treads. The winger feeds the slot, the shot is blocked, the rebound is tipped in, and the Upper Deck detonates. Strangers are hugging. A kid in a too-big jersey is lifted onto a stranger's shoulders. The lower bowl finally catches up, and the whole arena is one blue-red pulse. But the first sound, the true sound, always starts up top.
Reader's Guide
If you have never sat in the Upper Deck at a Blue Jackets game, you have seen the building but not felt it. The upper bowl at Nationwide Arena is where the game stops being a broadcast and becomes an event you are inside of.
The seats are closer together, the sightlines tilt you forward, and the acoustics mean that a hundred people chanting in the upper rows sound like a thousand. Fans up top tend to stand for the entire period, not just for big moments. You will see towels waved in unison, coordinated chants that build and crest, and a general low roar that never fully drops between shifts.
The culture is inclusive but loud. You do not need to be a hockey scholar to belong up there; you need to be willing to be loud, to be wrong about a call, and to treat a 2-1 win over a rival like a personal victory. The Upper Deck is not a VIP section. It is a community section. It is where the Blue Jackets belong to the people in the seats, not the other way around.
Go early. Find your row. Bring a towel if you can. And when the puck drops, let the noise out of you. That is the whole point.
Did You Know?
- The Blue Jackets' name and blue-and-red colours were inspired by the stripes of the Ohio state flag, a design choice made during the 1999 expansion process to root the team in local identity.
- The team played its first NHL season in 2000-01 at the Columbus Civic Center before moving to the Coliseum, and the passionate upper-deck culture dates back to those early, lean expansion years.
- Nationwide Arena, the team's current home, opened in 2005 and replaced the Coliseum, but the upper-bowl fan identity migrated with the supporters rather than staying with the building.
- In many NHL arenas, the upper deck is traditionally the loudest section because the elevated angle and tighter seating create a natural sound funnel, a phenomenon that is especially pronounced in Columbus.