Montreal City Weblog

Kate 16:09 on 2024-11-13 Permalink Reply  

• Kevin 16:49 on 2024-11-13 Permalink

  He’s not wrong. The stadium is a terrible place to see any event, and the sound is even worse.

  Especially when you compare it to Atlanta’s stadium which holds 70,000 people, has a retractable roof, and has nice sound and sightlines.

• Kate 17:38 on 2024-11-13 Permalink

  You’re not suggesting that we… build a new stadium?

• Kevin 18:28 on 2024-11-13 Permalink

  I think all money spent on the Big O just to get back to what it was is a waste. Nobody was asking for billion dollar objet d’art.

• thomas 20:59 on 2024-11-13 Permalink

  It is a billion dollar backdrop for tourist’s Instagram photos. What’s wrong with that?

• Kevin 21:08 on 2024-11-13 Permalink

  Thomas
  See item below about the need for cutting costs in healthcare. Cancel the big O. Done!

• thomas 22:54 on 2024-11-13 Permalink

  Kevin. If you want to be a world class city you must think big.

• Kate 10:22 on 2024-11-14 Permalink

  Do we, though?

• Meezly 10:50 on 2024-11-14 Permalink

  He’s not the first nor only one either. Many have wondered why big acts skip Montreal when they tour Canada. Not having a decent stadium is a big reason. But at this point, I’d rather have good healthcare.

• CE 10:54 on 2024-11-14 Permalink

  How many cities the size of Montreal have two big stadiums? The Bell Centre isn’t a bad venue for large acts, Place Bell does the trick for medium sized acts and then we have a number of venues of different sizes (from Metropolis down to Casa Del Popolo) for all different types of shows. Would having a second large stadium really bring in many more big concerts?

• Josh 11:46 on 2024-11-14 Permalink

  I don’t think two stadiums is the answer, but the Big O is not a long-term solution for big events like this. It’s one thing if the city doesn’t care if it’s in the running for such events, but if it does, at some point the Olympic Stadium is simply not going to cut it.

• Steph 12:40 on 2024-11-14 Permalink

  How many acts need a space bigger than the Bell Center? The “Taylor swift” touring business model favours doing MANY shows in the same city to lower transportation and setup costs. Oasis is copying them for their upcoming tour as well. We’re getting beat out by Toronto for these shows not because of the lack of venue, but due to the lower population.

• Joey 13:07 on 2024-11-14 Permalink

  Let’s take Taylor Swift as an example. Her upcoming run in Toronto (six shows) and Vancouver (three) mark the end of her Eras tour. According to setlist.fm, she hasn’t played fewer than two shows in any city she’s toured in. So keep in mind that the expectation would be a minimum of two nights of ticket revenue (and, due to the exchange rate and Montreal’s relative lack of major wealth, these would probably be the lowest-grossing shows of the tour, at least the North American leg). Probably something like 80-90K tickets sold, at, what $500 each? Are there 90K people who would go see Taylor play at a Montreal stadium? Consider that a lot of the big catchment area would compete with shows in New England, Toronto, New York, etc. It’s feasible but hardly. sure thing.

  Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour included lots of ‘one-night only’ stops – are there 45K people who would pay, what, an average of $300 to attend a Beyonce show in Montreal? Again, feasible, but hardly a slam dunk.

  And this assumes we have a nice, big, good-sounding stadium to host these tours, notwithstanding Nick Farkas’s hopes, it’s hard to imagine the Big O ever being anything other than cruddy – sound, looks, location, etc. It’s a big dump. And its most interesting feature, the tower, could conceivably continue to exist if the stadium were decommissioned, no?

  (Counterpoint: the Rogers Centre also sucks, and yet Swift is playing six shows there.)

  Should someone spend $1B+ to build a state of the art football-sized stadium in a city with no recurring need for it? That, in and of itself, would not guarantee that we elevate our place on the concert map? Seems like an easy ‘no,’ but if we’re going to spend $1B+ on renovating the Big O, we might as well at least try for a decent venue. Doing neither seems like a much wiser choice, especially given the province’s fiscal and economic situation.

• Kevin 13:53 on 2024-11-14 Permalink

  Thomas
  My big idea was to fill the toilet bowl, allowing the disconnection of the technical ring, and building a better stadium under the hole.

  Instead our money is going towards a temporary fix that still leaves us with an unusable venue.

• jeather 17:27 on 2024-11-14 Permalink

  I will bet any amount of money you like that there would have been 90k people willing to travel to Montreal to see Taylor Swift.

• dwgs 09:34 on 2024-11-15 Permalink

  Taylor Swift is the exception, my kids have friends who have travelled hundreds of miles, and in one case flew to Europe, to see her. She could sell 50000 tickets playing in Chibougamou.

• Ricardo 09:44 on 2024-11-15 Permalink

  simply confirms what we already know. Montreal is second class city.

• MarcG 10:06 on 2024-11-15 Permalink

  Where does all this class-of-city talk come from? The Montreal I know and love is grimy, greasy, arty, cheap, fun, and rebellious. I guess that version’s long dead now, buried somewhere under the Quartier des Spectacles.

• dhomas 12:02 on 2024-11-15 Permalink

  With respect to having two venues: the Bell Centre has a concert capacity of less than 20k spectators (19200). The Rogers Center has a concert capacity of 50k. The Big O has a concert capacity of 56k.
  You would need to fill the Bell Centre close to 3 nights to get the revenue of one night at the Rogers Center.

  If we do renovate the Big O (which we are apparently doing), we should at the very least make it usable as a stadium tour concert venue (i.e. good acoustics, etc.). Then, maybe all that investment will at the very least net us a couple of mil in revenue from shows like Taylor Swift et al.

• Kate 13:06 on 2024-11-15 Permalink

  Ricardo, that shows how silly this class-of-city talk is. We will never be London, Paris, New York or Tokyo. And that’s perfectly fine.

  Jean Drapeau once said “Laissons Toronto devenir Milan, Montréal restera toujours Rome.”