Highfield Road & Coventry Building Society Arena

The decision to move Coventry City from Highfield Road to a new stadium was taken in 1997 by the club's chairman, Bryan Richardson, and permission for a 45,000-seater followed in the spring of 1999, with completion targeted for August 2001. The original design had a retractable roof and a pitch that could slide out to reveal a hard floor for concerts. Coventry City's relegation from the Premiership in May 2001, a number of contractor and financier withdrawals, and the failure of England's bid to host the 2006 World Cup saw the plans downsized; by the summer of 2002 they were set at a more basic 32,500-seat stadium, and the ground was delivered four years behind schedule. It was built on the site of the Foleshill gasworks.

On 4 August 2004 it was announced that the new stadium would be called the Jaguar Arena, in a deal worth up to £7 million running until 2015. The deal was cancelled on 17 December 2004: the car manufacturer was forced to pull out because of the commercial difficulties that had caused the controversial closure of its Brown's Lane assembly plant, previously a major source of employment in Coventry. Jaguar kept the naming rights to the exhibition hall, and Ricoh's sponsorship of the stadium, reported at £10 million, was confirmed on 26 April 2005.

The arena became the home of Coventry City at the start of the 2005-06 season, following 106 years at Highfield Road. The first competitive match, against Queens Park Rangers on 20 August 2005, was played before a crowd reduced for safety reasons to 23,012 and ended 3-0 to Coventry, with Claus Bech Jørgensen the first player to score there. It was the first cashless stadium in the United Kingdom, its bars and shops run on a prepay smartcard system.

The official opening was performed by Dame Kelly Holmes and the sports minister Richard Caborn on 24 February 2007, by which time the ground had already hosted a sell-out England under-21 match against Germany and a full season of Coventry City football. Its first rugby union match came on 22 April 2007, a Heineken Cup semi-final in which Northampton Saints hosted London Wasps; 16,186 saw the Saints captain Bruce Reihana score the first try at the stadium and Wasps come from behind to win 30-13.

In December 2012 Coventry City's owners, SISU Capital, fell into dispute with the stadium operator Arena Coventry Limited - owned jointly by Coventry City Council and the Alan Edward Higgs Charity - over a rent of £1.2 million a year that gave the club no access to matchday revenue. A deadline for unpaid rent passed on 27 December 2012, a winding-up order was enforced through the High Court, and the club entered administration, accepting a ten-point penalty from the Football League and a further ten when ACL refused the proposed company voluntary arrangement. Coventry City moved its staff and shop stock out on 23 March 2013 and played its home games at Northampton Town's Sixfields Stadium.

The club returned on 5 September 2014, against Gillingham. Within weeks Wasps relocated from Adams Park in High Wycombe and, on 14 November 2014, bought the Higgs Charity's remaining 50 per cent share to become outright owners, and the north stand was renamed the Higgs Charity Stand. A crowd of 32,019 for Leicester Tigers' first visit was the highest for any sporting event at the stadium. Wasps Holdings entered administration on 17 October 2022 and ceased trading immediately, and on 17 November the arena passed to Mike Ashley's Frasers Group, which held a pre-signed deal to take it over in that event. All external Wasps signage was removed on 28 November 2022.

Twelve matches of the 2012 Olympic football tournament were played here as the City of Coventry Stadium, sponsors' names on venues barred by the International Olympic Committee, and Canada took the bronze medal at the ground on 9 August with a stoppage-time goal by Diana Matheson against France. It was Coventry Stadium for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, naming sponsorship again forbidden, bringing the rugby sevens, wrestling and judo. The venue was renamed the Coventry Building Society Arena under a ten-year deal announced on 5 May 2021.

Coventry City agreed a five-year licence with Frasers Group in April 2023, and on 23 August 2025 the club completed its acquisition of the arena, becoming landlord of its own ground twenty years after its first competitive match there. The seating bowl holds 32,609, and the wider site takes in a 6,000-square-metre exhibition hall, a hotel and a casino.