A relatively short update on music industry matters this week, as rather than reading any further thoughts from me on the challenge of all this arena building I’d like your help.
You may recall that I’ve published a series of articles questioning the permission to build a new arena in Manchester without, apparently, considering what the overall impact of such an arena might be on the whole live music ecosystem, both within the city and at a national level. If you want some more in depth consideration of the issues it potentially presents, there’s a good article in Dazed today by James Greig which you can read for more context. Without getting into that in depth look, the summary, which many of you will have heard me say repeatedly, is that there doesn’t seem to have been any consideration at all of the impact on the grassroots music venue ecosystem of trying to sell 2.7 million new tickets at higher values to visit a new arena. And this isn’t just an issue in Manchester, it’s an issue with all the plans to build all the 8 new arenas all over the country.
The developers of Manchester Co-Op Live, Oak View Group, have taken a pretty dim view of me asking these questions. To be honest, that unwillingness to have a meaningful conversation actually causes me to ask these questions with more force and persistence. Not because I am an awkward and curmudgeonly old git who won’t take no for an answer, but because there is either a straightforward answer to these questions or there is not. If there is, Oak View Group don’t need to keep issuing statements to local and national press expressing how much they care about the grassroots music ecosystem, claiming they are imminently going to have a meeting with me, or claiming they deeply care about grassroots music venues because they paid Blossoms quite a decent sum of money to play Night & Day Cafe. They can simply send out the report they should have that indicates how the impact of their new arena on that ecosystem was planned for and considered in their plans. The fact they haven’t done that suggests an omission from the plans that it may be too late to address and correct for Manchester. It’s still hugely important to the issue, because such an impact assessment should exist. If it does not that should be a lesson for the seven other new arenas planned elsewhere, and for any further proposals. A lesson that may require national government intervention to make it a legally required part of any planning application by any venue developer or proposed operator.
In the absence of any such report being supplied to me by Oak View Group, I decided to review everything that has ever been published regarding the granting of permission to build the Co-Op Live Arena. I think, after four or five days of late night trawling through it, that I’ve done that to the best of my ability. I can’t find a single point in any of the massive pile of paperwork, documents, comments, objections and recommendations that addresses the issue of what will happen to Manchester’s grassroots music venue ecosystem when Oak View Group open the new arena next year. I think I’ve looked as hard as I can and read everything there is, but maybe I’m wrong. There are hundreds of documents, maybe I’ve missed something. I would expect it to be a special report, which it definitely isn’t, but maybe they’ve hidden it away somewhere in one of the multitude of other presentations and statements.
So I’m handing this over to you and asking for your help. Here is a link to every document publicly available that details the plans for Manchester Co-Op Live Arena.
CHALLENGE:
I’m giving away two free tickets, at my own personal expense, to the grassroots music venue gig of your choice (anywhere, any time, any artist) to anyone who can find the grassroots music ecosystem impact assessment in any document, statement or proposal in these plans. Just post a link to the document with an explanation of how you think it relates to this issue with a comment below
As a bonus, and to confirm the vigorous nature of your work, I’ll make the same offer to the first person who posts the correct amount Manchester City Council have imposed as a financial contribution to the city as a whole, not to the live music ecosystem, via a Section 106 condition. Clue: It isn’t the £1 million that was recently proclaimed to be the amount by Andy Burnham on the front cover of the Manchester Evening News.
And finally…..I don’t know why I have to keep explaining this publicly in the hope Oak View Group might make the effort to listen to what is actually being said, but just for clarity:
I’m not trying to stop OVG from opening the Co-Op Live Arena. I simply want to have a conversation about what the impact of them doing it will be at a local, regional and national level. And once we have that conversation, which we’ve been trying to have with them since June 2022, to help them create and deliver a real action plan that addresses those impacts. That’s incredibly easy to do, it simply requires a genuine conversation based on the reality of the impact of a new arena.
It’s the same conversation we are having with every other existing and proposed arena operator. And if OVG, or anyone else, doesn’t have an answer, I’d like to help them to build one.
The collapse of the grassroots music venue ecosystem is happening right now and will undoubtedly be worsened by eight new arenas. That’s an issue for Tim Leiweke, Jessica Koravos, and OVG as much as it is for anyone else in the live music industry.
Good luck and happy hunting.