SAP Center at San Jose The SAP Center at San Jose , formerly known as HP Pavilion at San Jose , Compaq Center at San Jose and San Jose Arena is an indoor arena located at 525 West Santa Clara Street in San Jose , California . The arena is also commonly called The Shark Tank or The Tank , both of which come from its primary tenant , the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League . History . Plans for an arena in San Jose go back to the mid - 1980s , where a group of local citizens formed Fund Arena Now ( FAN ) , a group dedicated to getting an indoor arena built in the city . The group spent much of its time pushing city officials to build such a structure while at the same time selling the possibility of the building to interested groups , namely the NHL and National Basketball Association . In the late 1980s , then - San Jose mayor Tom McEnery met with FAN and helped to make their plans reality . Eventually , a measure was introduced that would allocate local taxes toward building an arena in San Jose ' s growing downtown , which would be voted on June 7 1988 . > The measure passed by a narrow margin : 73 , 409 to 64 , 140 . The plans for the arena would eventually be one of the reasons that George and Gordon Gund would locate their new Bay Area NHL franchise in San Jose , which would eventually become the San Jose Sharks . Construction of the arena began in 1991 , and was originally slated to open in 1992 . The construction ran into a rather sizable delay , however , when the management for the San Jose Sharks realized the arena had been designed for community use , and that it needed a drastic redesign to upgrade the arena to NHL standards . Most notably , the original arena design had no luxury suites or a press box , with the introduction of the former to the original plans would have reduced the arena ' s seating capacity to 14 , 000 . The time taken to redesign the arena delayed the opening of the building to 1993 , forcing the Sharks to play an additional season at the Cow Palace . The arena opened in 1993 as the San Jose Arena . In 2001 , naming rights were sold to Compaq , and the facility became Compaq Center at San Jose ; the geographic identifier was needed because at the time , there was a Compaq Center in Houston . After Hewlett - Packard ( HP ) purchased Compaq in 2002 , the company chose to name the arena the HP Pavilion ( as opposed to HP Center or HP Arena ) after one of their computer models lines . It was announced in late April 2007 that the HP Pavilion at San Jose would be receiving several building improvements , including a new scoreboard similar to that of the TD Banknorth Garden , home of the Boston Bruins of the NHL . With the addition of the new scoreboard and sound system , the existing control room was transformed into an additional luxury suite . A new video control room was constructed on the lower level of the arena . The sound console was moved to the broadcast pit , joining Sharks TV , Sharks radio , and visiting TV . Visiting radio was moved to an auxiliary location in the catwalk on the bench side of the arena . In June 2013 , German software company SAP ( co - founded by Sharks managing partner Hasso Plattner , who is also SAP ' s chairman of the board ) purchased the naming rights to the facility in a five - year deal worth $ 3 . 35 million per year . The arena was renamed " SAP Center at San Jose " following the approval of the San Jose City Council . Tenants . SAP Center at San Jose houses the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League and the San Jose SaberCats of the Arena Football League . It is also the venue for the annual SAP Open men ' s tennis tournament . The facility has also been home to the Golden State Warriors of the NBA during reconstruction of the Oakland Coliseum Arena , and the defunct San Jose Rhinos of Roller Hockey International and San Jose Grizzlies of the Continental Indoor Soccer League . It was also formerly home to the San Jose Stealth of the National Lacrosse League .