NEW OPENING DATE REVEALED FOR £365 MILLION INDOOR ARENA

Co-op Live, the £365m indoor arena being built in the shadow of Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium, has announced when it will open. 

The building will open its doors for the first time in April 2024. It had originally been expected to have been completed by December this year.

The 23,500-capacity arena is being built by BAM Construct UK and is being led by a joint venture between City Football Group and Los Angeles-based Oak View Group. Pop star Harry Styles and Simon Moran’s gigs promoter SJM Holdings, the holding companies of SJM Concerts and rugby league club Warrington Wolves are said to have shares in this venture.

Gaiety Investments UK, the business run by Irish concerns promoter Denis Desmond, is also an investor.

A Co-op Live spokesman said: “Co-op Live will be opening our doors to fans in April 2024.

It’s huge kudos to BAM, and the dozens of local subcontractors working on the project, that we are well within our original timeframe and on-budget given the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic, supply chain shortages, and an energy crisis.

We’re proud to be on the home stretch to delivering Co-op Live and we can’t wait to invite fans in to experience the biggest and most sustainable arena in the UK.”

It had also previously been expected that Co-op Live would start announcing the first shows in September 2022, with tickets going on sale a few months later. Test events are planned to be staged in April with an exact date for the first act open to the paying public expected to be announced in the coming months.

Co-op Live will feature a ‘smart bowl’ which took inspiration from conversations with Bruce Springsteen and Harry Styles.

The bowl will feature no corporate branding and will be lined by suites at the edges of level two which will include soundproof black curtains to maximise the impact of shows’ sound and lighting. The arena will also include the largest floor space of any indoor venue, a “significantly lower” ceiling, and tiered seating.

Co-op Live will feature 32 bars, restaurants and lounges, including a locally sourced and sustainable food and drink.

The venue was given the go-ahead in 2020 and has a 15-year naming rights deal with the Co-op. Co-op Live has a target to be net carbon neutral by 2038, be a 100% electric building, have almost 9,000 sqm of solar panels and produce no food waste.

It also aims to have no single use plastic on site, send no waste to landfill and use all the rainwater it collects.

The impact on the environment is a major plus point of the whole project and one that bosses will be hoping will help entice the largest acts from across the world to choose Co-op Live over other rival venues.

They will be hoping that most environmentally-conscious acts such as Coldplay will pick Co-op Live because of its green credentials instead of looking at other venues in the city.

In order to meet its net-zero carbon ambitions, bosses hired a sustainability consultancy used by Glastonbury Festival and Coldplay.

When it opens, Manchester will get its second indoor arena but the marketplace is already a crowded one as gigs can be staged at the likes of Emirates Old Trafford and Manchester United’s Old Trafford Stadium.

But the biggest competitor is sure to be the AO Arena which will be around 30 years old by the time Co-op Live opens its doors.

In an attempt to respond to its new competition, the arena announced a £50 Million revamp from last summer that will see the venue undergo a complete re-imagination’.

Bosses have previously said the venue will generate £1.5bn for the local economy, create 3,500 construction jobs during the build and a further 1,000 jobs and apprenticeships when it opens.

As part of its pledge to give £1m to national and local good causes every year, a portion will be reserved to help Manchester’s music scene. Those figures will be supported by an expected 120 events a year at the start which could be raised up to 200 in the following years.

About 80% of the events will be music but bosses have previously hinted that bids could be submitted to host NBA, tennis or boxing matches as well as a range of family-friendly acts.

Earlier this year the first look inside what has been billed as “most exclusive VIP experience” at Co-op Live was revealed.

The Bentley Record Room will be located next to the performers’ Green Room. The space will include low carbon Beluga leather seating and Bentley Home furniture, created in partnership with Luxury Living Group.

Co-op Live has a total of 28 suites with the likes of Betfred, Bruntwood and Mark Stott’s Vita Group among those to have snapped them up.

In order to help finance the project, OVG and City Football Group closed and funded a 27-year senior secured note and five-year senior secured credit facility for the venue.

At the time, the groups said the private non-recourse financing is the first for a music-focused live entertainment arena without a professional sports anchor tenant.

Apollo Global Management and Barings, through their respective clients and managed funds, provided the 27-year senior secured note. J.P. Morgan provided the 5-year bank loan.

Inner Circle Sports served as placement agent on the long-term portion of the financing. The balance of the funding towards the construction was provided by Co-op Live’s shareholders.