Indianapolis turns out to participate in the official opening of the new, state-of-art, Lucas Oil Stadium.

Lucas Oil Stadium, the new home to the Super Bowl XLI World Champs, the Indianapolis Colts, opened in August to great fanfare. The new Multi-Use $715 million facility features a retractable roof and sliding glass window opening to the city's skyline. In 2010, the NCAA Men's Final Four will be held in the new stadium and in 2011, the NCAA Women's Final Four. In 2012, the Super Bowl will be played in Lucas Oil Stadium. The 2008 NFL season will open for the Colts at Lucas Stadium when they face the Chicago Bears in a rematch of Super Bowl XLI, which will also be the first NBC Sunday Night Football game of the new season. On September 13, Kenny Chesney will headline the first public concert at the stadium, backed up by fellow country artists Luke Bryan, Gary Allan, and Keith Urban.

In addition to award winning football and popular music, Lucas Stadium was deliberately designed with meeting planners in mind—touting 183,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space. The stadium floor offers 140,000 square feet of field-level exhibit space and two secondary exhibit halls offer 43,000 square feet.  Adjacent to the exhibit space are 12 meeting rooms offering 13,000 square feet. A 31,000 square foot "party plaza" offers meeting planners a reception and pre-function area, and eleven loading docks at event-level make move-ins and -outs easy. The opening of Lucas Oil Stadium represents the first stage of the city's $1 billion expansion project.  Stage two is leveling the RCA Dome to make room for expanding the Indiana Convention Center, which will double in size by 2010 and be connected to the new stadium via a climate-controlled skywalk. The expanded center and new stadium will have a total of 749,000 square feet of exhibit space.

Indiana dignitaries officially cut the ribbon to the new Lucas Oil Stadium, a multi-use facility that will host numerous conventions, NCAA Final Fours and the 2012 Super Bowl.  Those gathered include Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, Indianapolis Colts Owner Jim Irsay, Forrest Lucas of Lucas Oil, the Indiana-based company who bought the naming rights and Blue, official mascot of the Indianapolis Colts.