Conceptualized and built by Arena Associates, consisting of Pistons managing partner William Davidson, along with David Hermelin and Robert Sosnick, The Palace was immediately recognized as an all-encompassing entertainment venue and it quickly became one of the nation’s top concert facilities. After just one season, The Palace was honored by two entertainment trade publications, being named “New Venue of the Year” by Performance and “Best New Concert Venue” by Pollstar. With the cost of the building and every dollar spent on additions and improvements being privately financed, The Palace continues to uphold its reputation as one of the world’s premier sports and entertainment venues.

Overall, The Palace has been nominated “Arena of the Year” 10 times by Performance magazine and won the award seven times. It has also earned 10 “Arena of the Year” nominations from Pollstar magazine and won the honor in 1992. Since its inception, The Palace has hosted almost every major touring concert act.

Since opening in 1988, The Palace has undergone more than $110 million in venue renovations throughout the years. For its 20th birthday in 2008, guests enjoyed a totally refurbished main concourse and its original club/banquet area was updated and re-launched as the Chairman’s Club. Among its other notable additions include the West Entrance Atrium, which was completed in 1996 and contains three levels of offices, a storage facility and an expanded entrance with numerous amenities. This was followed by the addition of the 12,000 square-foot Caesars Windsor Club on the concourse level. In 2004, a Light Emitting Diodes (LED) board was installed, allowing for the display of electronic signage around the entire arena and around the state-of-the-art hanging scoreboard during events.

The project also included a 65,000 square feet expansion of the North Entrance, named the Comcast Pavilion, which opened April 2006. The pavilion’s lower level is home to the other set of exclusive club/suites. Club 53, which opened in February 2006, boasts a central club/bar area and eight luxury private suites averaging 1,000 square feet. It is accessible via a private entrance in the Comcast Pavilion and through a tunnel entrance leading to 100 level suite corridor and an exclusive entrance into the arena. The pavilion’s concourse level created a dramatic new grand entrance/lobby, which provides guests with additional concourse space, additional box office windows and a new retail area. The new area also increased dining options and amenities in The Palace with café areas featuring Big Boy and Buffalo Wild Wings, the Red Bull Bar and Bacardi Bar. The upper level of the pavilion is the luxurious Ameriprise Financial Club, which has approximately 700 members. Opening approximately the same time was the Sanders Dessert Stop, located on the concourse at the top of the West Entrance stairs, offering sweet treats to guests for all Palace events.

Throughout the years, the organization has added more than a dozen branches. The growth led to a name change, Palace Sports and Entertainment, Inc. (PS&E), to reflect its ever-widening scope of operations. This expansion culminated in 1990 when it purchased DTE Music Theatre (then known as Pine Knob). Since its first summer operating the venue in 1991, the amphitheater has been named the nation’s busiest or top-grossing outdoor venue every summer by Amusement Business or Pollstar. Winner of Pollstar’s “Best Major Outdoor Concert Venue” in 2000, DTE has been nominated 11 consecutive times for this award which is voted on by a reader’s poll. The award capped off the amphitheater’s most successful year in which it posted its highest-ever total attendance and was listed as the top amphitheater in Amusement Business’ year-end charts and the top-selling outdoor venue on the year-end list of Pollstar.

In 1994, PS&E took over management of Meadow Brook Music Festival, which is housed on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester Hills. Both The Palace of Auburn Hills and Meadow Brook Music Festival have been named “Prime Site Award” winners by Facilities magazine in two consecutive years, 2003 and 2004.

The Shock joined the PS&E family in 1998 and made an immediate impact by posting the highest winning percentage at the time by an expansion team in any professional sport during its inaugural season. They accomplished that feat by going 17-13 for a 56% winning percentage. The Shock later delivered the organization’s third championship by winning the 2003 WNBA title and the fifth and sixth championships by winning again in 2006 and 2008.

The company continues to grow as minor league baseball team, the Asheville Tourists, a Class A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies, was added to PS&E ownership during the summer of 2005.