One Building, Two Teams

Sometimes two completely different badges have exactly the same right answer.

There's a quirk in this game that catches people out: a fair number of venues house more than one club, sometimes from entirely different sports. Two badges, two names, two fanbases — one set of coordinates.

Once you know which buildings these are, you get questions for free. It's one of the highest value-per-effort things you can learn, because the list is short and it never changes much.

The North American arena model

In North America, sharing is completely normal — particularly indoor arenas, where a basketball court and a hockey rink fit in the same bowl and the crew swaps the floor over between games. Some of the most famous buildings in sport are shared:

Crypto.com Arena is the outlier worth remembering: three professional teams across two sports and two leagues share it. Three different badges, one pin.

Outdoor stadiums share too, though usually across sports rather than within them. Gridiron and soccer coexist at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Soldier Field in Chicago, Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Lumen Field in Seattle and Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. The New York Yankees share Yankee Stadium with New York City FC — a baseball diamond and a soccer pitch in the same footprint, which is as awkward as it sounds.

And occasionally two teams in the same sport share: the Jets and Giants at MetLife, the Chargers and Rams at SoFi. Both of those pairs are also not in the city on their badge, which compounds nicely.

Why North America does this

It comes down to how the clubs are owned. North American teams are franchises — commercial entities that can and do relocate — and the buildings are typically financed as multi-purpose arenas, often with public money, on the explicit understanding that they'll host as many events as possible. An arena earning revenue 200 nights a year from two teams plus concerts is a much better investment than one earning it 41 nights from one.

The result is that the building has an identity somewhat separate from either team. Nobody thinks of Madison Square Garden as belonging to the Knicks rather than the Rangers.

Why Europe mostly doesn't

European clubs are, historically, member-owned associations rooted in a specific place. The ground isn't a venue the club rents — it's part of what the club is. Stamford Bridge, Anfield, the Bernabéu: these are not neutral buildings, and the idea of a rival moving in is close to unthinkable.

So sharing is rare, and where it happens it's notable enough to be famous in its own right:

Both are Italian, and both are cases of two bitter city rivals sharing a municipally-owned ground — the Milan and Rome derbies are played by two teams who are, in effect, each other's tenants. The Italian model of city-owned stadia is what makes it possible; in countries where clubs own their grounds outright, it essentially doesn't occur.

What this means when you're guessing

Three practical consequences:

• Learn the arenas and you get two teams for one fact. Knowing where TD Garden is answers both a basketball question and a hockey question. The North American arena list above is maybe fifteen buildings covering thirty-odd teams — an unusually good return.
• Cross-sport pairs are the ones people miss. Plenty of players know their hockey teams or their basketball teams. Fewer connect the two, and the game will happily show you a hockey badge for a city you only know through basketball.
• In Italy, a Milan or Rome badge is a coin-flip you don't have to make. Both clubs in each pair are in the same building, so you don't need to work out which one you're looking at. Rare luxury.

It's also a decent argument for paying attention to buildings rather than just teams. The team is what's on the badge, but the stadium is what you're actually being asked to locate — and stadiums outlast, and sometimes outnumber, their occupants.

If badges themselves are the harder part for you, reading a badge for geography covers what the crest itself gives away.