OVG’s Tim Leiweke, Francesca Bodie Discuss Co-op Live, Announce New London Venue

By Eamonn Forde

LONDON – Tim Leiweke, chairman and CEO at Oak View Group, (Pollstar parent company) and Francesca Bodie, OVG COO, used their on-stage interview at the International Live Music Conference (ILMC) in London on Feb. 28 to not just preview their new Co-op Live venue in Manchester, which opens in April, but also to tease expansion plans that include a new arena in London and one in Lagos, Nigeria. 

Co-op Live, which will be the biggest indoor arena in Europe when it opens, was offered up as proof of concept for what OVG are doing. The company’s senior execs discussed how arenas need to be better experiences for both audiences and artists alike and also greener, with carbon neutrality an immoveable condition in their buildings. 

“We can all do better,” said Bodie, addressing the whole live business. “And Transparency is key. [Co-op Live] is not just one project. This is a core part of our DNA and we want to make sure that we’re not only championing but challenging our industry to get better.”

Leiweke hailed Co-op Live as a carbon-neutral venue, citing artists like Coldplay and Billie Eilish as voices who are setting the debate here and wanting to work with venues to achieve these goals. “We as an industry should lead this charge and sustainability should be the cause of our lifetime in our industry,” he said. “If three years from now there are only two carbon-neutral arenas in the world – Co-op Live and Climate Pledge Arena [in Seattle] – we will have failed miserably.”

He added, “Sustainability cannot just be a page in a brochure.” It has to be something venue operators strike towards rather than just talk about. “Too many people in this industry and others just make it a page in a brochure and talk about how green they are. Bullshit!”

Leiweke and Bodie explained that they look to place new venues in areas that are either being underserved or not being served well. They also argued that venues can become catalysts for cultural expansion and creativity in new markets, with their planned arena in Lagos a case in point as they believe passionately that having a major venue there can feed into and amplify the wider global growth of Afrobeats. 

At Co-op Live, Harry Styles is an equity partner and he and his team provided invaluable insight into how the design of the venue could bring audience and performer closer. Leiweke cited a conversation he had many years ago with Bruce Springsteen where the singer insisted that the best venues, the ones in which he feels the closest connection with an audience, are “hot sweaty halls” and this has guided the company’s design brief ever since. 

Leiweke and Bodie told the audience they had initially hoped to book 120 nights at Co-op Live in its first year but have already exceeded this with 180 nights now confirmed. This is part of their move to have music treated as an “anchor tenant” in venues, the premier attraction over and above all other entertainment forms. 

“After 20 arenas that I’ve had the great privilege of being a part of, this is the best arena I’ve ever seen,” said Leiweke. He joked Co-op Live was not set up “to challenge my ex-company”, meaning AEG where he was President and CEO, but insisted the AO in Manchester was ripe for disruption as it was “not a great experience” despite having some of the highest number of music bookings for any venue globally. “We didn’t do it out of spite,” he said of opening a challenger venue in the same city, “We did it out of opportunity.” 

Given the company has invested $500 million in the new Manchester venue, Bodie was asked how long it would be before it turned a profit. She declined to put a date on it but confidently stated, “It won’t take long.”

Leiweke added that, despite being told it was “impossible”, they have sold suites for $300,000 a year at the venue. “Music is a phenomenal business, but you’ve got to take risks,” he said. “We’re pretty aggressive, we’re pretty focused and we’re very, very entrepreneurial.”

Manchester is just the first city in a bold expansion plan for the company across Europe. Leiweke said that the west of London needs a new arena as the city could comfortably sustain at least one more alongside Wembley Arena and the O2. He revealed the company is planning one in the west of the city, saying the capital needs an arena that is as good as, if not better than, Co-op Live, pointing to Sphere in Las Vegas as a symbol of what venues of the future need to be aiming for. 

“London’s the greatest market in the world for music, period, end of story,” he said to a room full of the key live industry figures from the city. “Why don’t we build the greatest arena in the world for London? So guess what – we’re coming.”