Bummed out that Taylor Swift's not coming to Montreal? Blame the Big O

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You don’t have to be a card-carrying Swiftie to be disappointed that Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is not coming to Montreal.

Any way you slice it, the fact that the world’s biggest pop star is snubbing Montreal is a huge loss for the city. It is estimated that the Toronto economy will receive a cash injection of somewhere in the neighbourhood of $300 million this month thanks to Swift, who is headlining six sold-out shows at the 49,000-capacity Rogers Centre. The absurdly popular pop singer begins her run at the Toronto Blue Jays’ home stadium Thursday, with shows continuing Friday, Saturday, and Nov. 21, 22, and 23.

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So why isn’t Swift coming to Montreal? There’s a simple answer. It’s not like our city doesn’t like the woman behind hits like Shake It Off, Cruel Summer, and Anti-Hero. The culprit here is Montreal’s stadium … or rather the city’s lack of a decent stadium.

The Eras Tour, which is the highest-grossing tour in the history of music, is a stadium tour. In other words it is specifically built for football or baseball stadiums, generally with a capacity of at least 50,000 to 60,000 people. The business model is that it usually touches down in a city for several nights, as is the case in Toronto, and people travel from thousands of kilometres around the city to see the show.

Sadly, right at this exact second, Montreal doesn’t have a working stadium. You may have heard that the Quebec government is paying $870 million — not a typo! $870 million! — to repair the Olympic Stadium’s perpetually mucked-up roof. Keep in mind that the close-to-one-billion-bucks price tag is only for the roof. It doesn’t include any renovations of the worn-out interior or any improvements to the notoriously terrible sound system.

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A spokesperson for the stadium wrote to say the Big O will be out of commission until 2028: “The Olympic Stadium is indeed closed for activities since it is a construction site. It will not be ready for use until 2028. Once the stadium is open, the Olympic Park teams will be open to all interesting proposals for major events (concerts, professional sports, etc.).”

But that’s not even the full story. Even if the Big O’s roof was up and ready, chances are Swift wouldn’t have performed there. Metallica played there last year but there have been very few major concerts there in the past decade because folks in the North American concert biz know that it’s not a great venue.

“It’s not used very often,” said Nick Farkas, senior vice-president (booking, concerts and events) at Evenko. “It just hasn’t been used for a long time. Metallica, for us, was the first show there in 10 years or so.”

One issue is that the sound is always problematic at Olympic Stadium concerts, an issue that dates back decades.

“Hopefully when the roof (is repaired) and they can do some sound adjustments, maybe it’ll be back to something we can use on a regular basis,” Farkas said.

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Farkas noted that there have been more stadium tours in the past few years and when an artist is on a stadium tour, the set-up is specifically built for that setting and usually cannot be adapted for a smaller venue like the Bell Centre.

“Artists like Beyoncé, that never did stadiums, are now doing stadiums,” Farkas said. “The technology has improved so much, so it’s easier to do (stadiums). What used to take 100 trucks now takes 50 or 60. We’re definitely seeing a trend toward stadium tours.”

Dan Seligman, creative director at the indie music fest Pop Montreal, is more blunt in his assessment of why Swift isn’t coming here.

“Whenever there’s those big stadium tours, they don’t hit Montreal because the Big O sucks,” Seligman said. “I don’t know if it reflects badly on the city as a concert scene but I’m sure the politicians and all the businesses would love a piece of the Eras tour. It’s great for the economy. It’s a phenomenon. So we’re missing out on just purely an economic level.”

Seligman also underlines, quite rightly, that Toronto is a top-tier city for concerts, on the same lofty playing field as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and Montreal isn’t. You also have to factor in the French fact ici — people in Montreal buy hundreds of thousands of tickets every year for francophone musicians and comics, providing competition for the live-entertainment dollar that you don’t have in other North American cities.

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But Farkas from Evenko said that not having Swift is not a sign of problems in the concert biz here.

“We didn’t get Taylor Swift, that’s going to happen,” Farkas said. “How many markets in North America got Taylor Swift? Not many. We’re still incredibly busy. We’re getting a ton of arena shows. Since COVID, it’s been busy after busy for us. And it’s at every level. The Beanfield Theatre (the old Corona), Studio TD (formerly L’Astral), every year is huge. People are going out to a lot of concerts and artists are touring. The touring business is alive and well for us. We don’t have a stadium and that’s limiting. Some artists will decide to do 10 dates in North America and we’re not Toronto, we’re not L.A., we’re not Chicago. But we had our busiest October ever at MTelus.”

And Swift will almost certainly return to Montreal, Farkas added.

“She played the (Bell Centre), I saw her,” Farkas said. “She may come back. Who knows? Maybe she’ll decide she’ll only do stadiums for the rest of her life. She may decide she’ll be in a residency somewhere and never leave there. She may decide she want to festivals. Who knows? Is it the last chance we’ll ever get to see Taylor Swift? I don’t think so. She’s pretty young. I get that it’s disappointing. I’m always disappointed when I don’t get to see the bands I want to see. People are freaking out. They’re also saying, ‘Why didn’t we get Coldplay?’ It’s because we don’t have a stadium. It’s just the reality.”

We don’t get Taylor Swift, but we do get to pay nearly $900 million for a stadium virtually no pop star wants to touch with a 10-foot pole.

bkelly@postmedia.com

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