Early years Campo de Lamiako was founded on 18 September 1887, on the right bank of the Nervión, next to the electricity factory, towards
Las Arenas, and near the
train track. The English employees of the Shipyards created a club called
Club Atlético, which was dedicated to the practice of several sports, who were mostly held at Lamiako. On 27 August 1892, Lamiako hosted a series of sporting events organized by Atlético's president (Enrique Jones Bird), such as
velocipede races,
foot races and
sack races. Permission was granted and the Hippodrome of Lamiako became the new home of football in the Basque Country. Although founded in 1898, Athletic Club de Bilbao was not officially established until 5 September 1901, in a meeting held in the Café San Gervasio de Cassolas, The edges of the Lamiaco field did not give rise, not even remotely, to conflicts of agglomeration despite the public being made up of the relatives and friends of the players. In 1903 the same group would win the
Copa Athletic, the biggest local tournament at the juvenile level, as well as play a match against
Club Ciclista de San Sebastián, the precursor to
Real Sociedad. which would later become
Arenas Club de Getxo, the
Copa del Rey winners of
1919. Because of the recurrent
field invasions, Lamiaco was fenced with
barbed wire in January 1902, and a sentry box was put up, right in the center of the train stop, for the sale of tickets and crowd control.
Club Vizcaya In 1902, the two clubs agreed to join the best players of each club to face a foreign team, the
Bordeaux-based side Burdigala. This temporary merge became known as
Club Vizcaya. Campo de Lamiako had its record attendance on the day (31 March) Burdigala faced Bizcaya, the very first visit by a foreign team to Bilbao, gathering a crowd of three thousand spectators, a tremendous amount at the time. Lamiaco used to host a championship called the
Athletic Cup, in which all the teams that were teeming in Vizcaya took part, and the championship's last edition was won by Arenas de Getxo, thus reaching the region's first category in that year. ==Decline and collapse==