The Co-op Live Arena finally opened at the fourth attempt last night, with Bury band (and most of the Roadhouse’s former bar staff) Elbow doing the honours as opening act which, let’s face it, was a much better option than Keane had the arena got things sorted a few days earlier.
On the whole, reviews seemed pretty good. Theatre writer and Warrington councillor Nik Cotter was impressed with the toilet provision:
Award-winning hyper-local magazine Altrincham Today was pleased nothing fell off the ceiling:
Economy/fintech/political consultant Jeffrey Peel was simply full of praise for a “superb” event:
And someone called Steph just stated the obvious:
So that is presumably the saga of the Co-op Live opening finally over and done with, and Manchester now has another world-beating venue to turn documentary makers’ heads away from Whitworth Street West.
Well, not quite.
Bizarrely, in an interview with the Manchester Evening News published just as the venue finally opened its doors Tim Leiweke, the president of venue operator Oak View Group, seemed intent on scoring one last PR own goal before the arena finally got things moving.
“People should stop kicking and start appreciating what we have here,” Leiweke opined, presumably referring to the appreciation that should be shown by the thousands who had bought tickets and paid for transport and hotels for Olivia Rodrigo or, god forbid, Keane, only to be told the venue wouldn’t be opening after all.
“Most of those shows wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Co-op Live,” he went on, seemingly oblivious to the fact that bands like Take That and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie had done the obvious thing and simply moved their gigs to the other 20,000+ arena in Manchester, suggesting they may actually have been here after all, even without his philanthropy.
I might add that that arena (the AO Arena, just to keep their SEO team happy) is also much better placed for getting a train home, should you turn up in Manchester for a gig only to be told your arena of choice just decided not to be open after all.
I have no skin in the game here. I already live in Manchester and I wasn’t going to see any of them.
“This building will have a greater economic impact than any project in Manchester, period,” the US-native Mancunian history expert added.
I’m no Simon Schama, but I’m going to punt that the Industrial Revolution is a project that had a far greater economic impact on Manchester, and the world, than a large building with sketchy aircon in Eastlands. The invention of the computer, graphene, and even communism have probably played a fair part too. But as I say I’m no Simon Schama, and Leiweke probably knows his socio-economic history of Manchester far better than I.
If none of this was enough to make you wonder whether Leiweke is secretly on the payroll of the AO, his appearance on the BBC 6 O’Clock News was even more of a head scratcher.
Addressing the incident in which part of the building’s ventilation system dropped from the roof, minutes before the arena’s second (third? I lose track) attempted opening with A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie should have started, the media-friendly CEO said: “If that was 15 minutes later, something catastrophic could have happened.”
In many ways I’m lucky that in my career as a journalist, thus far, I’ve never had to turn to the dark arts of PR to pay my bills (and I emphasise “thus far.” Don’t write me off yet high-paying potential future employers) but what?
I have no experience of PR, crisis PR, or even PR for beginners, but surely you emphasise all the great things you’re doing about safety for fans and chuck a few free beer vouchers out?
You don’t pile in with: “This could have been a catastrophe.” Without even being pushed there by a super-friendly interviewer?
Has the whole, £400m-and-counting Co-op Live experiment simply been an extremely expensive ‘immersive campaign’ for a resurgent Bell Pottinger’s crisis division? Or a cunning and long-running subliminal messaging operation by the owners of the AO?
Don’t get me wrong, I want Co-op Live to do well. And I’m delighted that, depending on which statistics you use, my hometown is now the site of both of Europe’s two biggest indoor arenas – not just the UK’s, but Europe’s. That’s huge. And the biggest of them all is incongruously sponsored not by a tech bro or a bank, but by the ancestors of the Rochdale Pioneers. These things are all very, immeasurably good.
An American chap with apparently limited understanding of the city he’s building his new megashed in telling Manchester – telling me, and you – to be grateful for what we’ve been given? That’s less good.
