Mississippi Coast Coliseum & Convention Center

Elvis Presley was set to play the grand opening. He died before it happened. Charley Pride sang the first concert instead, on November 18, 1977, and Blue Öyster Cult played the first rock show on April 16, 1978. That early calendar set the pattern: the Mississippi Coast Coliseum books whoever will draw a crowd to 11,500 reserved seats or 15,000 festival-packed bodies.

By the 2000s, that meant minor-league hockey teams that folded and returned and folded again, Larry Holmes beating Mike Weaver by sixth-round technical knockout on November 17, 2000, Sun Belt Conference and Metro Conference basketball tournaments, and the annual crawfish festival — one of the largest in the country, held over two April weekends. It meant Ozzy, Mötley Crüe, and Van Halen during their peak years, Depeche Mode on the Devotional tour, Aaron Lewis and Fred Durst recording an acoustic version of "Outside" at the 1999 Family Values Tour stop, and Miranda Lambert making return visits.

Hurricane Katrina flooded and wind-damaged the arena in August 2005. The Sea Wolves cancelled two full seasons. Repairs took until October 2007, when the team returned to the ice. The Coliseum kept doing what it had always done — Guns N' Roses in 2023, WWE Raw for the first time in eight years in 2013, Cruisin' the Coast weekend events, trade shows in the adjacent convention center.

The arena sits at 2350 Beach Boulevard. The reason to go is straightforward: this is still the primary enclosed venue for anything on the Mississippi Gulf Coast that needs a room and a crowd, and it has been since Charley Pride walked out on that stage in 1977.