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The MasterCard Center (), originally Beijing Wukesong Culture & Sports Center (), is an indoor arena for the 2008 Summer Olympics basketball preliminaries and finals. Ground was broken on 29 March 2005 and construction was completed on 11 January 2008. The stadium has a capacity of 18,000 and covers an area of 63,000 square metres. It was scaled back from its original design due to a 43% budget cut. The stadium was constructed by "Beijing Wukesong Cultural & Sports Co. Ltd." whose five shareholders are Zhongguancun CENCONS Group, Haidian State-owned Assets Investment Co. Ltd, Beijing Urban Construction Group Co. Ltd, Beijing Urban Construction Co. Ltd and the Tianhong Group. After the Olympic Games, the center become an important part of Beijing's Olympic Games heritage, allowing citizens to enjoy cultural, sports, leisure, recreational and commercial activities. It was a large-scale comprehensive project rare in Beijing in integrating cultural, sporting functions and commercial purposes with large-scale gardens and green space. On 6 January 2011 MasterCard Worldwide, the rival of Olympic sponsor Visa, announced the acquisition of the naming rights to the Center. It was renamed MasterCard Center effective from 21 January 2011. ==Baseball field== The Wukesong Baseball Field () was a baseball stadium located next to the Wukesong Indoor Stadium at the Wukesong Culture and Sports Centre in Beijing, China. It was one of the nine temporary venues at the 2008 Summer Olympics. It hosted baseball events. The baseball field had a total land surface of 12,000 square metres and a capacity of 15,000. It included two competition fields and one training field. In March 2008, the stadium hosted two games between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres called the MLB China Series, marking the first time Major League Baseball teams played in China. In what was to be the final Olympic Baseball matches in the foreseeable future, as the International Olympic Committee voted-out the baseball event for the upcoming 2012 London Olympics and 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics in favor of golf and rugby sevens,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Castro blasts Olympics for dropping baseball - Beijing Olympics - NBCNews.com )〕 Team USA clenched the bronze medal, while South Korea beat Cuba to claim the gold medal.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Photos: ROK glitters on diamond - The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games )〕 After the Olympic games ended, the facilities were demolished, as planned, for a shopping mall.〔http://www.baltimoresun.com/services/newspaper/printedition/sunday/maryland/bal-sp.maese22aug22,0,7134288.column〕〔 〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Chinadaily )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「MasterCard Center」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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