Mega venues like Co-op Live kill off small gigs that are lifeblood of the music scene so I don’t care if it flops
IT’S a familiar feeling. You discover a singer or band you like is going on tour – then you see where they are playing: Blah Blah Arena, Such and Such Stadium, the O bloody 2.
Immediately you feel the strain on your bank account as you tot up how much the tickets will cost with all the sky-high “booking fees” bolted on at the checkout.
You break into a cold sweat at the visions of hideous queues to buy £9 pints and £20 burgers.
Now you can add the excitement of an air conditioning unit possibly landing on your head or electrocuting yourself on some loose wiring.
Or simply a completely wasted journey.
That’s if you have had the misfortune of booking a ticket for a show at the chaotic clusterf**k that is Manchester’s Co-op Live Arena.
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The so-called “UK’s only music-first arena” has so far managed to force six musical acts to postpone their show or find another venue as it struggles with numerous significant problems.
Yesterday Barry Manilow became the seventh star to announce he was preparing to take his act elsewhere, booking the rival AO Arena as a back-up for his gig on May 19.
More could follow — Elbow are due on stage on May 14 and Eric Clapton is booked for May 18.
Liam Gallagher — set to play four nights in June — joked to a fan on Twitter/X that if he had to change locations, he’d “gig in Lidl”.
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“We’re gonna roll with it,” the supermarket joshed back, rubbing some extra salt in the wounds of rival Co-op, who handed over a reported £100million to sponsor the troubled venue.
I feel very sorry for fans who had made the effort to buy tickets, but I am sure I am not alone in having a quiet chuckle at this corporate calamity.
Because soulless jumbo joints like Co-op Live — capacity 23,500 — are sucking the life out of the live music industry by monopolising the market and driving up prices.
Where they flourish — two billion pounds was spent on tickets, largely to arena and stadium shows, in 2022 — many others fail.
Manchester’s £365million monstrosity — which has all the aesthetic charm of one of those Amazon warehouses you can see from the M1 — was built while hundreds of smaller venues crumbled.
Last year alone, 125 were forced to shut as costs spiralled — that is 16 per cent of the UK grassroots gig landscape.
Of the 835 that remain, a third are loss-making — with increasing rents cited as a key problem, according to data from the Music Venue Trust, a campaign group set up to help and protect grassroots venues.
It is rightly being talked about as an industry crisis.
The MVT has been trying to remedy this by calling on the Government to help it set up a music industry version of the Premier League-backed Football Foundation, which funnels cash down from the top of the footballing pyramid to the grassroots.
Their idea would see a £1 fee levied on tickets to arenas and stadiums used to support a fund to help smaller venues.
The rock band Enter Shikari, one of the MVT’s patrons, is trying to show how this levy could work by announcing in February that they will donate £1 from tickets to their arena tour to grassroots.
“Every time we lose another [venue] we lose a vital part of our culture,” lead singer Rou Reynolds declared.
Good for him. It is a commendable idea.
But he and the MVT face an uphill battle trying to convince other bands and greedy major venues to do the same.
Soulless jumbo joints
They have already met much resistance, not least from Co-op Live Arena, which MVT claimed had told them that “the reason they won’t financially contribute to that ecosystem is that they don’t need the acts that come through it”.
Really?
It is a position so dunderheaded it could only have been taken by, well, the kind of people who were in charge of the Co-op Live Arena shambles.
This problem is a painfully simple one to grasp. Fewer venues to play at equals fewer bands playing live.
And this has a clear and obvious knock-on effect for the giant venues — whether they like to admit it or not.
You only need to look at Co-op Live Arena’s planned line-up to see why it matters.
Elbow’s first gig (as Mr Soft) back in 1990 was at the Corner Pin pub in Ramsbottom, Lancs.
That venue has now been converted into offices.
Eric Clapton first wowed crowds with his guitar skills in 1963 at Studio ’51 in London’s Leicester Square. It is now a block of luxury flats.
And Liam Gallagher swaggered on stage with Oasis for the band’s debut at Manchester’s Boardwalk club in August 1991.
By the end of the decade it had closed down.
You can play this game with many of the big acts touring the globe today.
Convince paying public
The large venues need to listen to the MVT.
The fast bucks they are currently enjoying will not last forever if they allow the supply chain of acts to die.
Meanwhile, the Co-op Live Arena is in a race against time to convince the paying public it is a venue that is fit for purpose.
But I hope that while it sorts out its troubles, those who are considering going there will look around at what’s happening elsewhere.
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Because the best gig of your life may not be the one you see in a £398.50 seat in Section 105, Row 15.
It might be in the pub at the end of your road.
