If you name it, they will come.Â
At least, that appears to be what Rogers is hoping will happen.
Live Nation Canada announced on Thursday ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½’s largest purpose-built outdoor concert venue, built on top of the defunct Downsview Airport. The new facility will host up to 50,000 attendees and will be dubbed the Rogers Stadium.
Rogers Stadium, billed as ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½â€™s largest purpose-built outdoor concert venue, is slated to open next year.
That already builds on the Rogers Communications empire of building names — including Rogers Centre downtown, another popular concert venue with close to 50,000 seats that will host Taylor Swift in November. Once Rogers Stadium is built, Rogers will have its name on the front of two of the largest concert venues in Canada. That doesn’t include Rogers Building — home to much of the corporate conglomerate’s ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ operations. There’s also the TIFF Lightbox, formerly the TIFF Bell Lightbox until Bell dropped as the headline sponsor. Rogers took over that role in July but TIFF hasn’t renamed the Lightbox as of yet.
Rogers has cornered the market in other areas too.
Earlier this month, Rogers bought out Bell’s stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment for $4.7 billion, handing the telecom giant majority control over the Maple Leafs, Raptors, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ FC and Argonauts in one fell swoop — on top of its pre-existing ownership of the Blue Jays.
And, outside of ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, Rogers also has Rogers Arena in Vancouver and Rogers Place in Edmonton (though it only owns the naming rights and not the building). Rogers is competing with Scotiabank for most eponymously named buildings, with Scotiabank Arena, the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary and Scotiabank Centre in Halifax.
Why are corporations all over our big buildings?
If you go to any concert or sporting event in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, almost every modern venue has a corporate sponsor’s name plastered at the top. Budweiser Stage and Coca-Cola Coliseum are some of the largest venues in the city.
There’s also the CAA Theatre, not to be confused with the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre (there’s also the CAA Arena in Belleville). Or Meridian Hall, also not to be confused with the Meridian Arts Centre (and the Meridian Centre in St. Catharines).
“While we still intend to use the Rogers Centre, they have a very full baseball schedule, so it made sense to ideate a purpose-built concert venue,” Erik Hoffman, president of music at Live Nation Canada, said.
What does it all mean for ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½?
ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½’s more historic venues, though, have been able to maintain their names — Massey Hall, Roy Thomson Hall and the Danforth Music Hall are some of the most famous places to catch a concert. However, those venues are unable to host the increasing demand for stadium-level productions that are trying to book the Rogers Centre.
“We’re in a world of monetization,” Matti Siemiatycki, director of U of T’s Infrastructure Institute, said. The naming of Rogers Stadium, and the creep of big, corporate conglomerates into our concert venues and sports stadiums is more “innocent” than the monetization of our data and personal information collected through cellphones, he said.
“I think it’s a sign of the times of our cities and our economy. We in Canada, we are a country of oligopolies — big companies in key sectors. And so over time, everywhere, our public spaces and cities have become more corporate and more commercial.”
But, the new Rogers Stadium, he added, is “a fantastic idea,” an important and good use of valuable, and often limited, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ space.
“Not everything is for sale, and not everything should be for sale, but I think that we’re in a fiscal crunch and these facilities, especially the publicly-owned ones, are aging,” Siemiatycki said. There’s a tradeoff, he added, between having large privately-owned buildings and venues while also maintaining the state of these spaces.
“If there’s resources coming in that can be used to make sure that the facilities are top-notch and accessible, and in a good state of repair, I think we’re in a world where that’s a tradeoff that we need to at least explore.”
With files from Joshua Chong.
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