Best Seats At the Delta Center
Delta Center opened in 1991 as a basketball building and spent the next three decades being very good at exactly that — steep, tight, and loud enough that the Jazz built two Finals runs on top of it. Then the NHL’s Mammoth arrived in 2024 and the geometry stopped working. What’s happening now is the most interesting renovation in American sports: Smith Entertainment Group is rebuilding the bowl around a retractable riser system so the same seats can serve a 94-foot court and a 200-foot sheet of ice, and it’s being done in pieces, one summer at a time, through 2027.
Which leads to the honest reality of buying a ticket here right now — this is a very good arena that still has a few thousand seats that aren’t, and knowing which is which is worth more at Delta Center than at almost any other building in either league.
Seating Overview
Two bowls hold every regular ticket. The lower bowl runs sections 1 through 22; the upper bowl runs 101 through 140. Everything premium sits in the bands between them, on the Club level (Level 2) and the Suite level (Level 4). Your ticket sends you to a lettered portal rather than a numbered gate — A through Y on the Main concourse, the same letters doubled to AA through YY on the Terrace concourse upstairs.
What separates a good seat from a bad one here depends entirely on which team you came to see. For the Jazz it’s the row number: the lower sideline sections are club-only through row 12, and the center-court sections run as deep as 32 rows with the entry tunnel at the top, so “lower bowl” covers everything from courtside to a serious climb. For the Mammoth it’s the deck. Every lower-bowl seat has had a full view of the ice since the 2025 rebuild. Several thousand upper-bowl seats still don’t.
Best Non-Premium Seats at Delta Center for Jazz Games
Sections 17–19, row 20 and up. The sideline opposite the benches, high enough that the entry tunnel is at your back instead of 25 rows below you. You get head-on views of both benches, the timeout huddles, and everything a coach does with his hands. The tradeoff is that you’re paying center-sideline money for seats most of the way up the lower bowl.
Sections 5–9, row 13 and above. Row 13 is the first non-club row on that entire sideline — rows A through 12 belong to the Toyota Club — so this is as close as a normal ticket gets on the bench side. You’re directly above the coaching staff and the scorer’s table, which is either the appeal or the problem depending on how much of the near baseline you want to see.
Best Non-Premium Seats at Delta Center for Utah Mammoth Games
Sections 6–8 and 17–19, center ice. Full flow of the game, clean line changes, and the ability to watch a rush build from the far blue line. These are the priciest non-club tickets in the building, and on a Saturday against a rival they price like it.
The lower corners and end zones. Phase one of the renovation stretched the bowl 12 feet at each end and raised the event floor two feet, which killed every obstructed seat downstairs — the official full-view count for hockey is 12,478. Most NHL arenas can’t say that about their corners, and Delta Center still prices them like the compromise they used to be.
Best Value Seats at Delta Center
Upper sideline, the middle third of either side. The whole floor, the whole sheet, and the loudest part of the building on a night that matters — for roughly a third of the equivalent view downstairs. The climb is real: escalators only run from Portals D and Y on the Main concourse, and everything else up there is stairs.
Row 1 of an upper-bowl end section at the south end, for hockey. Row 1 clears the 100-level railing that blocks every row behind it, which buys you the near-net view the rest of your section is missing. That matters at the south end specifically, because the north end’s terraces are designed to solve the problem outright. It’s a single row and it sells first, so it’s a plan-ahead pick rather than a day-of one — and it stops mattering entirely after the 2027 offseason.
Cheapest Way Into a Delta Center Game
The upper end zones are the floor of the market, and for basketball they’re an honest deal: full court, behind the basket, nothing hidden. For hockey the two ends are no longer the same purchase. The north end was rebuilt into terrace-style seating for the 2026-27 season with full views of the sheet. The south end — the visitors’ bench end, and the one Utah shoots at twice — still holds the arena’s remaining single-net seats, and keeps them until the 2027 offseason. Buy the north end if you want cheap and complete. Buy the south end only if the price genuinely reflects what you’re giving up, and check the current chart either way, because the numbering at the north end moved with the rebuild.
Our Pick
Upper sideline, middle third, five to ten rows up, for either sport. You’re centered on the floor, above the club bands, and sitting in the section of the building that generates the noise Delta Center is famous for.
What to Avoid at Delta Center (and What’s Worth Trying Once)
Upper end zone, south side, for hockey. These are the single-net seats through the 2027 offseason, and no videoboard replay makes up for missing a goal live at the end you came to watch Utah attack.
Rows A through 8 of the lower center-court sections, if you plan to move around. Delta Center puts its entry tunnels at the top of each section and those sections run up to 32 rows, so every beer is a 60-step round trip past everyone in your row.
Worth it once: the upper end zone on a playoff night. When the Mammoth won their first home playoff game in April 2026, head coach André Tourigny said the noise was loud enough that his bench couldn’t hear which line was up. You can watch a game from anywhere. You can only feel that from inside the building, and the cheap seats feel it hardest.
Premium Seating & Clubs at Delta Center
Premium here lives in two horizontal bands wrapped around the middle of the bowl — the Club level and the Suite level — plus an event-level club reserved for courtside holders. All of it is being touched by the renovation, with the north-side suites mid-refresh through 2027.
The Best Premium Experience
The Toyota Club is the biggest premium footprint in the building and the only one that puts you in a genuine lower-bowl seat with an all-inclusive lounge behind it. It covers rows A through 12 in the sideline sections and the first two rows of the two baselines nearest them — about 1,500 seats — with a private bar, dining tables, private restrooms, and wristband pickup at Doors 2, 5 or 8. It’s also the reason lower-sideline resale jumps straight from courtside to row 13.
Best Value Premium
The suite-level table clubs, currently branded the Gallagher Club, let you book a four-to-twelve-person private table instead of committing to an entire suite. In a building with only 56 suites, that’s the difference between hosting six people well and not hosting them at all — you get the Level 4 entry, the catering and the atmosphere at a fraction of a full suite rental. The tradeoff is that you’re at a table rather than in a seat hanging over the floor.
Other Premium Options at Delta Center
The event-level club (currently Entrata) sits on Level 1 with roughly 240 seats and is restricted to courtside ticket holders. The 48-seat suite-level lounge (Delta Sky360°) is the smallest and most exclusive space in the building. The Interform Club is a suite-level lounge with beer, wine and upscale buffets, and the Level 2 club on the opposite sideline (Black Desert) holds about 180 seats and was fully remodeled in the 2025 phase. The oddest one is the Teebox Lounge — a private space for up to 60 with two golf simulators, a putting green and a cash bar, with your arena seats included. Coming for 2026-27: suspended “gondolas” hung above both sidelines, seating more than 200 fans at a bird’s-eye angle nobody in this building has had before.
Suites & Group Options
Fifty-six suites are split between Level 4 and the lower bowl. Corner suites are bunker-style at floor level and seat 12 to 15; courtside suites are the top of the market. Season deposits run through the Jazz premium office, single-game rentals through group sales, and pricing swings hard by opponent and sport.
Delta Center Capacity and Seating Chart
Delta Center holds 18,186 for Utah Jazz games, up to 16,020 for Utah Mammoth hockey, and about 20,000 for a concert with the floor open. The address is 301 West South Temple, on the northwest edge of downtown Salt Lake City.
The building has six levels — Event, Club, Main, Suite, Terrace and Sky — but only two of them carry general seating: the lower bowl (sections 1 to 22) and the upper bowl (101 to 140). For smaller shows the room curtains down into the NuSkin Theater configuration at 3,000 to 7,000 seats.
Two things trip people up reading the chart. First, the entrances are lettered portals, not numbered gates, and the letters repeat between the Main and Terrace concourses. Second, the numbers have moved: the upper north end was rebuilt into terrace-style seating for the 2026-27 season, so any chart from an earlier season is wrong at that end — and plenty of ticket resale sites are still serving the old one.
Here is the basketball and hockey Seating Maps to the Delta Center.
Tickets To Utah Jazz and Mammoth Games
SeatGeek is the only offical outlet for this arena — the Jazz, Mammoth and Delta Center all moved off Ticketmaster in 2023, and a ticket that can’t land in a SeatGeek account can’t get you through the door. The single-marketplace setup keeps resale spreads tighter here than in most markets. Beyond that, the two tenants behave in opposite ways: Jazz inventory is deep and softens as the week goes on, so a midweek game against a non-contender is one of the cheapest tickets in the NBA, while Mammoth demand outran the seat count the day the franchise arrived and the renovation has been adding capacity slower than the fan base has grown.
Buy hockey early, buy basketball late, and treat anything against a Western rival that travels well as a postseason-priced game from the moment the schedule drops.
Get Utah Jazz and Utah Mammoth Tickets Here! Through our partners at Vivid Seats you can get tickets to any concert, event or Jazz, or Mammoth game at the Delta Center. Or any event in Utah from the Utes to BYU!
Delta Center Bag Policy
Delta Center does not have a clear bag policy. It has a no-bag policy — bags and purses of any kind are prohibited. There are two exceptions: diaper bags and medical bags up to 14″ x 14″ x 6″, and clutches or wallets up to 4″ x 6″ x 2″. Both get X-rayed, and the X-ray machine exists at exactly one entrance, Door 5 on the northeast corner, so if you’re carrying either one that’s your door regardless of what your ticket says. There is no bag check, which means a backpack has nowhere to go but back to your car. Strollers and umbrellas are also on the prohibited list — worth knowing before you walk over from your hotel in a storm.
Is the Delta Center Cashless? And other policies to know
Cash-free, with a workaround. Cards and mobile payments only, but there are five cash-to-card machines: the America First Atrium and Portals F and T on the Main concourse, Portals HH and VV upstairs.
No re-entry at Jazz games. Other events vary at the promoter’s discretion, so don’t assume.
Utah’s alcohol rules are stricter than you’re used to. Two drinks maximum per ID per purchase, nothing served in a container over 25 ounces, sales stopping at the end of the third quarter for the Jazz and immediately after the third-period puck drop for the Mammoth. And a rule you won’t find in another arena: if 50% or more of your face is painted, they won’t serve you.
Accessible seating sits throughout the building with day-of exchanges at Guest Services (Door 4/Portal Y), accessible parking is in the Park Place lot northeast of the arena, assistive listening devices are free with an ID held as deposit, and there’s a sensory room on Level 5 between Portals LL and MM with KultureCity sensory bags available at no charge.
For a full list of all updated policies check the arena website.
Getting To The Delta Center
Drive in from the suburbs, but if you’re already downtown, take TRAX — the ride is genuinely free, and the station is across the street.
Delta Center Parking
More than 10,000 spaces sit within a two-block radius, spread across eight official lots that each map to a specific arena door. Park Place, 50 North 300 West, is the closest and largest surface option at 1,260 stalls, sells game-by-game passes through ParkWhiz, feeds Door 5, and holds the accessible spaces. The Gateway Mall garage at 75 South 400 West is 2,200 covered stalls into Door 8. The Triad Center at 50 South 300 West is 1,475 covered stalls into Door 2. Prices float by event, and most lots have stopped taking cash entirely.
The hack worth knowing: spend $35 or more at Crown Burgers, 118 North 300 West, on a game night and they hand you a parking pass for their lot — a short walk to Door 5, and you’ve eaten a pastrami-topped Crown Burger instead of paying arena prices twice. Two caveats that matter: the lot holds about 200 cars, so it’s first-come and gone early on a sellout, and Crown Burgers is closed Sundays. The other move is City Creek Mall at 50 East South Temple, where the first two hours are free; that only covers a short concert rather than a full NBA game, but it’s the cheapest legal parking downtown.
TRAX & Public Transit
The Arena station sits directly across South Temple from the building, and it’s inside UTA’s Free Fare Downtown Zone — board and exit within the zone and the trip costs nothing. Read that literally: the free ride only applies if both ends of your trip are inside the zone, which runs roughly 600 East to 600 West and South Temple to 500 South. The airport is well outside it, so flying in and riding the Green Line downtown is a standard $2.50 fare, not a freebie. It’s still the easiest airport connection of any arena in the Mountain West — no transfer, and the train drops you across the street.
Two things to plan around. Weeknights and Saturdays, trains run until roughly 11:30 PM, which covers a 7:00 puck drop with room to spare. Sundays are a different system entirely — service runs on wider headways and shuts down as early as 8:00 or 8:30 PM depending on the line, so a Sunday evening game or concert will end with no train home. Check the timetable for your specific line before you commit to transit on a Sunday. You can also get a bus to and from the arena.
If you’re coming from Ogden, Davis County or Utah County, skip I-15 and take FrontRunner, UTA’s commuter rail, into Salt Lake Central or North Temple and transfer to TRAX for the last mile. It’s the single best way into a Delta Center event from outside the valley and almost nobody visiting knows it exists.
Rideshare
Lyft is the official partner here, and the pickup and dropoff zone is the southeast corner of the arena on 300 West. Dropoff works fine. Pickup after a sellout does not, because 18,000 people are ordering simultaneously onto one street. Two better options: walk two blocks east toward Main Street, or cut northwest into The Gateway and order from inside the district, where drivers can reach you without ever touching the South Temple gridlock. The Gateway version has the advantage of putting you somewhere with a bar attached while you wait.
Walking
If you’re anywhere in the downtown core you should be walking, with one caveat: Salt Lake City’s blocks are enormous by design, roughly 660 feet on a side. “Three blocks” here is closer to three-quarters of a mile than to three blocks anywhere else in America. Compounding it: downtown sits at about 4,226 feet, and if you flew in from sea level that morning, a mile on foot will wind you in a way the map doesn’t warn you about.
Delta Center Insider Tips
The building rewards people who know a few specific things — where the X-ray is, what the Wi-Fi is called, which stand refills your cup. Here’s the list that actually changes your night.
Who Plays at Delta Center? The Utah Jazz and Utah Mammoth
The Utah Mammoth are the NHL’s newest franchise, and they’re only two years old. Smith Entertainment Group bought the Arizona Coyotes’ hockey assets in April 2024 and moved players, coaches and staff to Salt Lake City in a matter of months — so fast there was no time to pick a name.
They spent an entire season as “Utah Hockey Club.” The permanent identity came on May 7, 2025, after four rounds of fan voting and more than 850,000 ballots. Mammoth beat out Outlaws, Yeti and simply keeping Hockey Club. Mammoth fossils turn up across Utah, including a complete skeleton pulled out of Huntington Canyon in 1988.
If you see old merch or an old seating chart, that’s why. Anything branded Utah Hockey Club predates the 2025-26 season, and a lot of ticket resellers and seat-view sites still haven’t updated their listings. Check the date on anything you’re using to buy a seat.
The Jazz have been here since 1979 and in this building since 1991. Two Finals appearances, both against Jordan’s Bulls, and a fan base that has never quite gotten over how the second one ended — which becomes relevant a few tips down.
What’s New at Delta Center: The 2025–27 Renovation
What’s New at Delta Center: The 2025–27 Renovation
The entire bowl is being replaced, one offseason at a time. SEG began in April 2025 and expects to finish in October 2027. When it’s done, every seat in the arena will have been replaced and reconfigured for full sightlines at both sports.
The 2026-27 season is the first with the north end and the gondolas. The upper-north end zone is now terrace-style ledges with full views of the floor and the ice, and suspended “gondolas” hang above both sidelines — hospitality pods over the floor holding more than 200 fans at a bird’s-eye angle nobody in this building has had before. The 450-stall parking structure at the southwest corner opened alongside them.
The 2027 offseason is the south end, and it’s the big one. A single connected slope will run from the floor to the top of the building at the visitors’ bench end, in the style of the Intuit Dome’s wall — designed, per Jazz president Jim Olson, to put fans directly on top of the visiting team. That phase is what finally kills the last of the single-net hockey seats, so the 2026-27 season is the last one where the south end of the upper bowl comes with an asterisk.
Verify your section against a current chart, not a saved screenshot. Section numbers at the north end changed with the terraces, and a lot of ticket sites are still serving maps from two seasons ago.
Delta Center Food & Drink
The Mountain Menu is the best value in professional sports. Two-dollar bottled water and three-dollar popcorn, nachos, hot dogs and Farr’s ice cream bowls, at 15 concession locations spread across Levels 3 and 5.
It only applies to Jazz and Mammoth games. Walk in for a concert and the same stands charge normal arena prices, which is a genuinely jarring gap if you’re expecting the three-dollar hot dog.
Buy the Stanley Gameday Quencher if you drink a lot of water. It’s the only refillable container allowed inside, sold at the Team Store, and refilled at Tenders on the Main concourse (Portal U) plus Summit Snacks (Portal YY) and Tenders (Portal DD) on Level 5. It’s banned at every non-Jazz, non-Mammoth event, so don’t bring it to a show.
Order from your seat. Everything runs through the app, a QR code at the stand, or the ordering kiosks in the Atrium and at Portals D, F, J, L, R, T, W and Y downstairs and DD, GG, JJ, LL, RR, TT, WW and YY upstairs. Alcohol is the exception — that still requires a person and an ID.
Drinking at Delta Center: Utah’s Liquor Laws Explained
Ask for a can if you want a real beer. Utah caps draft beer at 5% ABV, full stop, in every bar, brewpub and arena in the state. Higher-ABV beer is completely legal — it just has to come in a bottle or a can. If the tap list looks weak, the cooler behind it usually isn’t.
Your cocktail is measured, not poured. State law requires a metered dispensing system: 1.5 ounces of primary liquor per drink, maximum, with up to one additional ounce of flavoring liquor on top. No bartender in Utah can give you a heavy pour, and asking for one puts their license at risk rather than getting you a better drink.
Bring ID regardless of your age. Since January 1, 2026, every establishment licensed to sell alcohol in Utah has to check every customer’s ID, no matter how old they look. Leave your wallet in the hotel safe and you’re drinking water.
Know whether you’re walking into a bar or a restaurant. Utah treats them as legally different: restaurants serve alcohol only alongside food and admit all ages, while bars are 21-and-over and can serve without a meal. This decides which pregame spot works if you’ve got kids with you.
Arrival Strategy & Best Entrances
Doors open 90 minutes before tipoff or puck drop. That first half hour is the best version of this building: short lines, warmups on the floor, and room to walk the concourse.
Use Door 5 if you’re carrying anything at all. Northeast corner, and the only X-ray in the arena. Every diaper bag, medical bag and clutch goes through it.
Otherwise, enter from where you parked. Door 8 from The Gateway or the Hyatt House garage, Door 2 from the Triad Center, Door 5 from Park Place, City Creek or Crown Burger.
You can start lining up on the property at 8:00 AM. Irrelevant for a Jazz game, decisive for a general-admission concert.
The plaza is the pregame. The main outdoor plaza on the south side is where the crowd collects, marked by a 14-foot illuminated Jazz Note and a Mammoth puck sculpture just over 14 feet tall. During the 2026 playoff run, fans were showing up to the Playoff Plaza party four hours before puck drop.
Getting Out After the Game
The Arena TRAX platform is the bottleneck, not the doors. Walk four minutes east along South Temple to Temple Square station and you’ll board a train that isn’t already full.
Give 300 West ten minutes. The rideshare zone and the passenger dropoff lane share the same street, so the first ten minutes after the buzzer are gridlock by design. Ten minutes at a bar across the street costs you nothing and saves you all of it.
Best Photo Spots at Delta Center
The plaza sculptures at dusk. The Jazz Note lights up, and the puck next to it is the only Mammoth landmark in the city. Shoot them after sunset with the arena glass lit behind.
From across South Temple. The arena’s glass frontage with the Wasatch Range rising behind it is the shot that says Salt Lake City rather than “generic downtown arena.”
Inside the America First Atrium. Twelve thousand square feet just past the main entrance, and the only interior space in the building with enough room to back up and frame a group.
Jazz & Mammoth Traditions Worth Knowing
“Tusks Up.” The Mammoth’s gesture and rallying cry, and you’ll see it before you hear it explained. Hands up, index fingers curved.
Noise is the organizing principle here. Delta Center’s reputation as one of the loudest buildings in the NBA predates the renovation, and the 2027 south-end slope is being designed specifically to amplify it rather than to add seats.
The Wi-Fi network is a 28-year-old grudge. Connect to arena Wi-Fi and the network you’ll join is called JordanPushedOff — a permanent reference to Michael Jordan’s shove on Bryon Russell before the shot that ended the 1998 Finals. Utah has not let it go and shows no intention of doing so.
Bringing Kids to a Jazz or Mammoth Game
Under 24 months gets in free but has to share your seat. Two years and up needs a ticket like anyone else.
Strollers are prohibited and there’s no place to check one. So are umbrellas. Plan on carrying everything you bring.
The Mountain Menu is why a family night here beats almost anywhere in either league. Four hot dogs, four waters and a couple of popcorns lands under $30, which is roughly one beer and a pretzel in most arenas.
Bring earplugs for younger kids. This building gets loud enough that an NHL head coach couldn’t make himself heard on his own bench, and a playoff game or a concert is genuinely uncomfortable for small ears. Guest Services also loans out KultureCity sensory bags with noise-cancelling headphones free of charge, which works if you forgot.
Six Cozy Earth mother’s rooms are spread through the building — on the Main concourse near Doors 1 and 7, and on Level 5 beside the sensory room.
Autographs, Warmups & Player Access
Get in at doors, not ten minutes later. The first stretch after the building opens is the only window when the lower bowl is empty enough to walk down toward the floor during warmups.
Both benches share the same sideline, in front of sections 5 through 9. Home bench toward the north end, visitors toward the south. If you want to be near the action before the game, that’s the side to aim for.
The Delta Center App & Mobile Ticketing
Everything is digital. No paper tickets exist here, and your tickets live in your SeatGeek or team app rather than your email.
Closed captions run for every Jazz home game inside the Jazz app — game day hub, then the captions button. In a building this loud that’s a real feature, and almost nobody knows it’s there.
Team Store & Merch
The Team Store is directly inside the main entrance off the Atrium, with four entry points from the outdoor plaza and both teams’ gear under one roof. Fanatics has run the retail since 2025, so expect Nike, New Era, Mitchell & Ness, ’47 and WinCraft.
American Express cardholders get 10% off direct Team Store purchases.
Use the pop-up stands on a busy night. They’re scattered through the concourses and the lines are a fraction of the main store’s, particularly after a Mammoth win.
You can also buy merch through our partner at Fanatics, so you’re ready when gameday arrives and don’t have to pay extra at the arena.
Delta Center Quirks
Escalators exist in two places on the Main concourse: Portals D and Y. Everything else is stairs, and elevators are priority-use for guests with disabilities and premium holders. If the climb to the upper bowl matters to you, plan your entrance around D or Y.
The designated smoking area is outside Door 9, and you have to stand 25 feet off the building. E-cigarettes are prohibited inside and permitted out there.
Text “SOS DELTA” to 848-261 for anything going wrong in your section — it’s faster than finding an usher in a full house.
If You’ve Got Extra Time in Salt Lake City
Temple Square is two blocks east of the arena and free to walk. The Natural History Museum of Utah, up on the university’s foothill campus, is worth an afternoon for the dinosaur halls alone. But the honest answer is the mountains: Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons put you at Alta, Snowbird, Brighton or Solitude inside 45 minutes of the arena doors, which no other NBA or NHL city can claim. Build a ski day around the game rather than the other way around.
Hotels Near The Delta Center
The Delta Center publishes its own list of partner hotels with negotiated event rates — eight of them, on the arena’s site under “Where to Stay” — which is a better starting point than any aggregator and a page almost nobody finds. One local wrinkle: the Salt Palace Convention Center is next door, so a large trade show can strip downtown of rooms with no relation to the sports calendar. For a weekend game, book four to six weeks out.
Best Areas to Stay Near Delta Center
The Gateway, immediately west and northwest of the arena, is the obvious target. It’s an open-air retail and dining district that has become the pregame center of gravity, and everything in it is a five- to eight-minute walk to a door.
The downtown core along West Temple, two to four blocks east and south, gives you bigger hotels, City Creek and Temple Square, and a walk that’s still easy. Past 500 South, the block lengths turn a “short walk” into a real one — check the map, not the block count.
Where to Book Near the Arena
Asher Adams is the splurge and the most interesting building in the city to sleep in — the restored 1909 Union Pacific Depot at the west end of The Gateway, with the old Grand Hall serving as the lobby bar. Five minutes to Door 8, and a partner hotel with negotiated rates. The tradeoff is price, and a historic structure where sound carries.
AC Hotel Salt Lake City Downtown at 225 West 200 South is the comfortable middle — modern, mountain views from the upper floors, easy walk from the arena and the convention center both. Breakfast isn’t included, which surprises people at the rate.
Hyatt House Salt Lake City/Downtown at 140 South 300 West has a trick the others don’t: its garage is one of the eight official Delta Center parking lots, so you park where you sleep and walk to Door 8. Rooms have kitchens and breakfast is included. Parking is billed separately.
Courtyard by Marriott Salt Lake City Downtown at 345 West 100 South is the plainest partner hotel on the list and the one that’s genuinely across the street. Nothing about it will surprise you, which is the point when you’re in town for one night and a game.
Kimpton Hotel Monaco is the character pick if you’d rather stay downtown than at the arena — a converted 1920s bank building at 15 West 200 South with a cocktail bar in the old vault. Six or seven minutes east on foot, which is longer than it looks after a night game.
Radisson Hotel Salt Lake City Downtown sits at 215 West South Temple, directly across from the arena and on the partner list. The rooms are dated and there’s no pool; the location is the entire argument, and for a lot of people it’s enough.
Budget Options
Hampton Inn Salt Lake City-Downtown at 425 South 300 West is a partner hotel with free parking, which is genuinely rare downtown and worth $25 to $30 a night on its own. You pay for it in distance — figure 15 minutes on foot.
Holiday Inn Express Salt Lake City Downtown at 206 South West Temple is closer in and honest about what it is: clean rooms, decent breakfast, no frills. Parking is extra and the covered spaces fill early, so arrive before the crowd does.
Restaurants & Bars Near Delta Center
Salt Lake City Gameday: Bars & Restaurants Near Delta Center
Gameday here doesn’t look like Denver’s or Chicago’s, and people arrive expecting the wrong thing. There’s no tailgate culture and no single strip of bars. Instead the crowd pools in two places — the arena’s own outdoor plaza on the south side, and The Gateway across the tracks to the west — and then moves indoors more or less all at once about twenty minutes before doors.
The plaza is the underrated half of the night. It’s where the Jazz Note and the Mammoth puck sit, where SEG stages the pregame parties, and where a playoff crowd will stand in the cold for hours because being outside the building with 3,000 other people is its own event.
Best Pregame & Postgame Bars Near Delta Center
Flanker Kitchen + Sporting Club at The Gateway is the closest thing to an official pregame headquarters — enormous, screen-covered, with karaoke rooms and a serious cocktail list. It doesn’t open until 5:00 PM on weekdays, which catches people out before an early game.
The Break Sports Grill at 140 South 300 West is directly across the street from the arena and licensed as a restaurant, so all ages get in. It’s the practical choice with a group that isn’t all 21, and the postgame turnover is fast.
Poplar Street Pub at 242 South 200 West is the local’s answer — a proper pub with a rooftop terrace and a beer list that’s actually interesting. It’s 21-plus and they check at the door.
The Bruce Scottish Pub on Rio Grande Street is two minutes from The Gateway crowd and a completely different room: smaller, quieter, windows on the street, and bangers and mash if you want a real meal before you walk over.
Best Restaurants Near Delta Center
Crown Burgers at 118 North 300 West is the Utah meal — a char-grilled burger buried under pastrami, from a local chain running since 1953. Spend $35 and you get a parking pass out of it, which makes this the single most efficient pregame decision available. Closed Sundays.
HallPass at 153 South Rio Grande is the food hall inside The Gateway, with barbecue, ramen, tacos and burgers under one roof and tablet ordering throughout. It’s the answer when a group of eight can’t agree and you have 45 minutes.
Red Iguana on North Temple is the restaurant Salt Lake sends visitors to, and the mole is the reason — several of them, with a sampler before you commit. The wait on a game night is the problem, and the local workaround is the fix: Red Iguana 2 at 866 West South Temple is a few blocks away, runs the identical menu, and rarely has the same queue. Locals default to the second one and let tourists stack up at the original.
Siegfried’s Delicatessen at 20 West 200 South is the downtown lunch counter everyone who works nearby already knows about — German, cheap, enormous portions, and a full market attached. The catch is hours: it closes at 6:00 PM Monday through Thursday, so it only works as a pregame stop on a Friday or Saturday when they’re open until 9:00. Closed Sundays.
Squatters Pub Brewery at 147 West Broadway has been brewing in this city since 1989 and remains the most reliable sit-down meal within walking distance of the arena. Get the cheese curds, and order your beer in a can if you want it at full strength.
Why You Should Go
Delta Center is the only building in North America hosting an NBA team and an NHL team while rebuilding itself around both at the same time, and watching that happen in real time is genuinely interesting if you care about arenas. But the main reason to come is simpler: this is a loud, steep, old-fashioned building in a city where you can ski in the morning and watch a hockey game at night, and where a hot dog still costs three dollars. In 2034 it will host Olympic hockey. Go before everyone else figures that out.
Explore all of our arena guides and check out our journeys to Utah and BYUs great stadiums as well as these:
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Crypto.com Arena in LA and the Chase Center in SF.
Thanks for reading!
Written by Brad Richards. Founder of Gameday Guides. This guide includes insights from personal visits as well as updated info from team sources, fan forums, and stadium policies. We aim to help you plan with confidence — enjoy your gameday. If you have any tips, if we missed anything or you have a question, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email.