Dort Financial Center
sports, entertainment and convention venue in Flint, Michigan

The Dort Financial Center (originally IMA Sports Arena and formerly Perani Arena and Event Center) is a sports, entertainment and convention venue located in Flint, Michigan, United States. It opened in 1969 and is the home of the Flint Firebirds who play in the Ontario Hockey League.
Facilities
The main arena of the complex, the largest exhibit hall of complex, features 29,280 square feet (2,720 m2) of space and can accommodate 4,021 for ice hockey and 6,069 for concerts, plus 400 in standing room. The second arena in the complex features 27,206 square feet (2,527.5 m2) of space. Both arenas are frequently used for trade shows, conventions, hockey games and other sports. In addition, the main arena is used for concerts.
Initially named the IMA, an acronym for the Industrial Mutual Association. Being the second such complex in Flint called the IMA, The IMA Auditorium was turned into part of the AutoWorld complex.
The complex was named for Bob Perani, owner of Perani's Hockey World, a sports equipment retailer in Flint. Perani's Hockey World paid for naming rights to the complex.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dort Financial Center” as sports, entertainment and convention venue in Flint, Michigan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7166936. Authority coordinates are 43.011, -83.642. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dort Financial Center” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.