No Major Events At D.Live Open Air Park Germany Until 2020

– The skyline of Düsseldorf
City council has yet to clear D.Live

The new D.Live Open Air Park in Düsseldorf, Germany, has been off to a rough start, because city council hasn’t cleared the site as an event location yet.

It looked like the 80,000 capacity open air venue would be opening with a bang, when FKP Scorpio had to relocate the July 22 Ed Sheeran concert from the airfield in Essen/Mülheim to the nearby D.Live Open Air Park in Düsseldorf.

However, the city’s municipality refused to give permission last minute, leaving FKP and Sheeran’s management with a feeling of “astonishment and infinite disappointment.”

FKP Scorpio CEO Folkert Koopmans told Pollstar at the time that it had been the first time in his company’s almost 30-year history of promoting major concerts and festivals, that a city council deviated from what has become an established approval procedure in the live entertainment business.

Earlier this month, German media reported that “the promoter of Rock in Rio” had been inquiring about using D.Live Open Air Park as site for the first German edition of the festival brand, which is owned by Live Nation.

D.Live CEO Michael Brill has since confirmed that there had been talks with “various promoters about the planned D.Live Open Air Park, including the promoters of Rock In Rio.”

However, Düsseldorf’s Committee of Urban Development and Planning didn’t grant an exception permit for such an event, which would have been necessary, seeing that the site hasn’t yet received clearance as a permanent festival and event location.

Whether the site is going to receive the necessary treatments to function as a festival site in the future is currently the issue of a zoning process carried out by the city. “Given the presumed duration of the process, usage [of the site] probably won’t be possible before summer 2020,” Brill told Pollstar.

He said that there was a clear need within the live entertainment scene for a venue that exceeded the capacity of Düsseldorf’s 66,500 capacity

“There’s high demand for open air venues in the city area of Düsseldorf: Enquiries have been made with D.Live as well as the state capital, for several years now” Brill explained. (Düsseldorf is the capital of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia)

“That’s why the idea to create an open air space in the city, that could be used for big open air concerts and festivals, was formed in 2017,” he continued. “An open air space for up to an estimated 80,000 visitors would make Düsseldorf more competitive in the market, especially compared to Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, which is able to offer 10,000 to 14,000 more seats on average than Esprit arena in Düsseldorf.”

D.Live encompasses the venues operated by Düsseldorf Congress Sport & Event: Esprit arena (maximum capacity 66,500), ISS Dome (14,000), Mitsubishi Electric Halle (7,500), the Castello Düsseldorf (3,000), and D.Live Open Air Park.