Marquette Sports Law Review Volume 27 Article 2 Issue 2 Spring The urC ious Case of the Bradley Center Matthew .J Parlow Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw Part of the Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons Repository Citation Matthew J. Parlow, The Curious Case of the Bradley Center, 27 Marq. Sports L. Rev. 271 (2017) Available at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw/vol27/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. GANN 27.1 (DO NOT DELETE) 7/19/17 10:04 AM ARTICLES THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE BRADLEY CENTER MATTHEW J. PARLOW* I. INTRODUCTION On March 5, 1985, Jane Bradley Pettit—along with her husband, Lloyd Pettit—announced that she was going to pay for the construction of a new sports arena, the Bradley Center, and donate it to the people of the State of Wisconsin so that they could enjoy and benefit from a state-of-the-art sports facility.1 The announcement was met with much enthusiasm, appreciation, and even marvel due to Mrs. Pettit’s incredible generosity.2 But few, if any, seemed to fully understand and appreciate how unique and extraordinary Mrs. Pettit’s gift was and would become. This lack of awareness was due to at least a few contextual factors. Up until the time of Mrs. Pettit’s announcement, the United States and Canada—where all of the teams in the four major profes- sional sports leagues played3—experienced only a modest number of new * Dean and Donald P.