Craven Park (currently known as the Sewell Group Craven Park Stadium for sponsorship reasons) is a rugby league stadium located in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is the home of Hull Kingston Rovers, one of two professional rugby league teams based in the city.
History
Hull Kingston Rovers moved to the new ground in 1989 from the Old Craven Park which was sited on Holderness Road. The new stadium was the first in Rugby League to offer hospitality boxes. The stadium was the former home to the Hull Vikings speedway team, but they left when the ground was refurbished for Hull Kingston Rovers to use in the Super League. The first match was played against Trafford Borough with a full capacity 8,500 crowd to watch. The club convincingly started the new era, and in that season were crowned Division Two champions.
In 2006 the ground and pitch were substantially improved as the club sought a return to the top flight of English rugby league. Plans for Hull Kingston Rovers to move from Craven Park to a new purpose-built rugby league stadium to be constructed at a new, unconfirmed site were suggested in 2007, but shortly after this, Hull City Council, in partnership with Kingston Community Developments Limited and Hull Kingston Rovers, announced that terms for lease agreements had been reached to support the long-term future of Craven Park. These terms enabled investment and development of the stadium to move forward.
The initial phase of redeveloping Craven Park was the lease purchase of a temporary seated north stand from Wentworth Golf Club, replacing the use of the inadequate south terrace for visiting away fans. Hull Kingston Rovers' second season in the Super League in 2008 coincided with work beginning on the extension of the standing terraced East Stand. This extension increased the capacity of the stand by 1,120 bringing its overall capacity to 4,750. A similar extension to the opposite end of the stand, which would increase the capacity again by 1,200, was planned in 2009, but this expansion was placed on hold in 2011 as construction of a new North Stand took priority.
Construction work on the new £8.2 million mixed facilities North Stand began in 2012 following the removal of the temporary Wentworth Golf Club stand. The new stand was initially projected to be completed halfway through the 2013 season with the opening match set to be a Hull FC derby, however disputes between the club, Hull City Council and construction managers NPS saw the opening delayed to 2014. The disputes saw the North Stand cladded in sky blue rather than red as originally planned and club director Neil Hudgell fearing the stand would become a "glorified office block". Following its opening, the new North Stand would be named the 'Colin Hutton North Stand' as a tribute to the former Hull KR coach and the Great Britain national rugby league team coach.
A new attendance record was set at Craven Park in 2018, beating the previous record of 11,181 in the season opener against the Leeds Rhinos in 2015. 12,090 spectators attended the stadium to watch cross city rivals Hull FC defeat Hull Kingston Rovers in a Good Friday derby.
A floodlight collapse in November 2018 saw Hull Kingston Rovers declare a 'major incident' and relocate players and staff to the University of Hull for off-season training. One pre-season match in 2019 was relocated and the club would return to Craven Park in late January using a temporary floodlight.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw all Super League teams play behind closed doors at two neutral venues for a majority of the 2020 season and two rounds of the 2021 season, with only a handful of matches being played with no fans at Craven Park in 2021. When crowds returned to season ticket holders only in May 2021, initial restrictions on crowd capacity would see the club erect a temporary seated stand over the disused South Stand, allowing a socially-distanced capacity of 6,000. The temporary stand would be removed following the lifting of social distancing restrictions and replaced with a food and entertainment area on the site named 'Craven Streat', inspired by the fan park of Canadian Super League expansion team Toronto Wolfpack's Lamport Stadium and American football tailgate parties. The name references the Craven Street Football Ground, the site of Hull Kingston Rovers' first rugby league matches.