HP Pavilion

The HP Pavilion, commonly called the Shark Tank or just The Tank, is an indoor sports stadium located at 525 West Santa Clara Street in San Jose, California.

Named after the computer company Hewlett-Packard in a naming rights arrangement, the HP Pavilion houses the following sports teams:

• NHL - Ice Hockey - San Jose Sharks
• NLL - Lacrosse - San Jose Stealth
• AFL - Arena Football - San Jose SaberCats

The arena opened in 1993 as San Jose Arena. Later, naming rights were sold to Compaq, and the facility became Compaq Center at San Jose; the geographic identifier was needed because at the time, there was a Compaq Center in Houston. After HP purchased Compaq in 2002, its name replaced Compaq's.

The facility has also been home to the Golden State Warriors of the NBA, and the former San Jose Rhinos of the RHI. It has also been used for other sporting events, such as the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, and one of the venues for the NCAA Basketball tournament (known as March Madness).

The arena is one of the most active NHL venues. It hosts an average of 184 events a year, including many non-sporting events. For the nine month period ending September 30, 2004, the HP Pavilion had sold the most tickets to non-sporting events of any venue in the United States, and the third highest in the world.

Computers

HP Pavilion is also a line of computers produced by Hewlett-Packard. The name is applied to both desktops and laptops, which is unusual because most manufacturers treat their desktop and laptop products as separate product lines. For example, Dell has two desktop lines, Dimension and Optiplex, and a separate laptop line, Inspiron.

When HP merged with Compaq, and took over Compaq's existing naming rights agreement, it was natural that HP would replace Compaq's name with its own computer brand.

External links

• HP Pavilion Website
• San Jose Sharks Website