Botched launch of UK’s largest indoor arena hits bum note for Manchester

In April the co-owner of the UK’s biggest indoor arena — Co-Op Live — boasted about the quality of the venue. “The best I’ve ever seen,” Tim Leiweke of Oak View Group told the Financial Times. On Wednesday its launch was abruptly postponed a third time when part of an air-conditioning unit fell from the ceiling.

The £365mn Manchester attraction is Denver-based OVG’s first foray outside the US. Since its chaotic soft-launch night on April 23, Co-Op Live has been beset by last-minute cancellations, confusion, safety concerns and the sudden resignation of the venue’s general manager.

The chaos has tarnished the state-of-the-art hall’s brand before it has even opened and created thousands of angry fans of acts like musician Olivia Rodrigo and comedian Peter Kay. It has also brought back uncomfortable memories in a city still scarred by a deadly terrorist attack on Manchester’s other indoor venue seven years ago this month.

One senior local official said the saga threatened to “damage ‘brand Manchester’”, as the city seeks to continue its rapid growth and secure its status as a cultural counterweight to London. 

“It’s a huge embarrassment for the city,” they said of the issues at the arena, which forms a key part of long-standing moves to regenerate a former industrial area around Manchester City football club’s Etihad Stadium. 

“I think Co-Op now are thinking about how they repair their reputation,” they added.

Co-Op Live is a joint venture between arena giants OVG and City Football Group, the owners of next-door Manchester City FC. Musician Harry Styles is also an investor.

Originally announced in 2019, the 23,500-capacity arena is intended to attract huge audiences from across the north of England and beyond. 

Speaking to the Financial Times a week before the April 23 test launch, OVG chief executive Leiweke admitted the build had not been straightforward, noting that its opening had been delayed from January.

“Brexit is real, inflation is real, interest rates are real. We have also happened to have the rainiest winter in the history of Manchester,” Leiweke said. “All of that impacted the timeline on the construction.”

But he stressed his confidence in both the project and its lead building contractors, BAM, the Netherlands-owned construction giant.

“Great credit back to BAM, as they did a phenomenal job of battling through all of the issues and distractions that were created,” Leiweke said. “They took a pretty good hit, but they maintained a level of quality and excellence on the building that is the best I’ve ever seen.”

Journalists had already gathered at the venue, were sipping champagne and listening to speeches from international investors, when the dry-run opening began to unravel on the afternoon of April 23.

The evening’s event — a private performance by 1980s singing star Rick Astley — could not go ahead at capacity, the local fire service had concluded, due to the safety implications of construction delays.

At two hours’ notice, more than half of those invited to the event then had their tickets cancelled. Gig-goers who did attend observed hanging wires and holes in the walls, while the tills did not work and crowd organisation felt chaotic.

One described being “crammed in” by security at the top of the venue’s escalator afterwards, while stewards tried to clear the crowd downstairs.

“It felt unsafe,” he said. 

Both OVG and regulators said that there were appropriate risk mitigations in place to ensure the reduced-capacity private event went ahead safely. 

However the venue’s general manager, Gary Roden, quit abruptly a few days later, after a backlash against comments criticising the professionalism of grassroots music venues. He had suggested smaller venues were “poorly run”.

Ongoing delays to the building’s electrical systems then caused its full-capacity public launch, a performance by comedian Peter Kay, to be cancelled twice in quick succession. 

Central to those decisions were the communications system used by emergency services in the event of a major incident, which did not fully work as a result of the building’s incomplete electrics. 

Such issues are of paramount sensitivity in the city, where a bomb at the Manchester’s other indoor arena — now known as the AO Arena — killed 22 people in May 2017. At the public inquiry into the attack, failures of communication between emergency services were heavily criticised.  

OVG said that the communications system used by Greater Manchester Police, Airwaves, “is not required in any UK arena and therefore was not anticipated” ahead of the venue’s opening. 

GMP had conducted tests of their communications systems “in the days preceding” the soft launch, according to OVG, concluding that coverage was “low”.

“At that point, Greater Manchester Police requested Co-op Live install Airwaves as a means of boosting their communications systems coverage,” OVG added. Airwaves has now been put in place.

However, several people with close knowledge of the Co-Op Live project said that building delays had long been known to OVG.

One said it had been clear for some time that the project would not be finished on time, adding that a final push to complete the arena was hampered by labour shortages in the construction market. “It’s a real shame,” they said. 

With safety approvals eventually in place, Co-Op Live rescheduled its opening a second time to Wednesday this week.

But as teenagers queued outside to see rapper A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, a screw from the air-ventilation system fell to the floor of the main auditorium during the sound check.

Two figures familiar with the incident said a larger part then plummeted to the floor. The gig was swiftly cancelled via social media and concertgoers were requested to “leave the area”.

OVG said the issue was caused by a “factory defect” in a component that was “not assembled on site”. A spokesman described the part that fell as a “nozzle”.

“We decided to cancel the show because we did not have enough time to physically check all others before show time,” they added. “That test is being carried out now by a third-party inspector.”

A spokesman for BAM said the “safety of fans and staff is our number one priority” and apologised for the inconvenience. City Football Group did not respond to requests for comment.

A gig by the US artist Olivia Rodrigo, scheduled for Friday, has now been cancelled, along with other upcoming shows by Keane and Take That.

The rival AO Arena, whose operators have argued Manchester could not sustain two such indoor venues, is expected to host several of the cancelled gigs.

Additional reporting by Josh Noble