Executive Profile: Hamilton Gets Its Shot With Nick DeLuco At Helm Of TD Coliseum

With a high quality of life, relatively affordable cost of living, proximity to other major cities like neighboring Toronto and Buffalo and steady population growth in recent years, Hamilton, Ontario, has long established itself as a good place to live.

Adding to that, the region’s live entertainment landscape is about to dramatically improve with the opening of TD Coliseum, a $300 million overhaul of the stalwart Copps Coliseum that opened in 1985 and has remained a viable — although outdated — tour stop.
Opening Nov. 21 with a special concert by Sir Paul McCartney, the now-18,000 capacity facility will feature modern amenities unseen in the city before, including first-of-its-kind event level suites, new sustainable energy and recycling programs, upgraded audio video and technological capabilities, as well as first-class dedicated artist amenities and hospitality spaces.

Editor’s Note: This interview took place in October and was included in the 2025 Pollstar Concert Venue Directory, which can be purchased here.

Expanding capacity to 18,000, the music-first venue looks to bring a top-line, big-league indoor venue to a growing market that is home to close to 10 million people. While it may go head-to-head for some dates with the venerable Scotiabank Arena in Toronto about an hour’s drive away, TD Coliseum looks to add opportunity for touring productions as a potential second stop in the region as well.

“Everyone in Hamilton is excited,” says Nick DeLuco, senior vice president and general manager of TD Coliseum. “It’s going to bring hundreds of thousands of people downtown. We’re excited to be in Hamilton, we’re excited for the venue, we’re excited to work with our partners at the city and we think it’s truly going to be a catalyst for the growth and development of the city.”

Some of that excitement was seen during a job fair in August, which saw 1,700 applicants for 800 positions.

Key players on the arena team alongside DeLuco are Matt McDowall, general manager of theater and arena operations, who has been at the venue since 2013; assistant GM and VP of events Celine Seguin, who joins from the CARAS organization; senior director of marketing Adam Armit, who joins from MLSE; senior director of booking Alex Patton, whose experience includes time at Live Nation, Endeavor and The Agency Group; and Toni Campbell, senior director of sponsorship activation.

Born and raised in Ontario, and having opened the Avenir Center in Moncton, New Brunswick, in 2018, DeLuco gave Pollstar a sneak peek behind the scenes at TD Coliseum ahead of its big (re)opening. With new dates being announced seemingly every day to go along with JUNO Awards hosting duties in March and other high-profile events including concerts by Andrea Bocelli, MGK, Jonas Brothers, Nine Inch Nails, Twice, Rod Stewart, Cardi B and still others, the reimagined venue is already having an impact.

The venue is developed by Oak View Group with partners in Live Nation, designed by Brisbin Brook Beynon Architects and construction handled by Ellis Don. Oak View Group is parent company to Pollstar.

POLLSTAR: What’s the current status of the venue as you approach opening night?
Nick DeLuco: We’re more on the finishing stages now, with getting to just five weeks out. Most of the major stuff, the rigging grid, the dressing rooms, we’re finishing those off, some of the back-of-house spaces, drywall, painting. We’re not fully complete obviously at this point, but the major structural stuff is all done and we’re just getting finishings done and getting as ready as we can for Paul on the 21st of next month.

Initially the opening was planned for December?
We did move our opening up to make this Paul date work. It was that important for us. So we pushed the initial opening date up a couple weeks to make it work. We’ll get there. It’ll be a great venue on Nov. 21 and I’m sure we’ll have some Day 2 work, like every other venue, and keep the process going, but we’ll be ready to open with a great venue on the 21st for everybody.

The calendar is filling up quickly since the announcements of Andrea Bocelli, JUNO Awards hosting duties and special restaurant concept from chef Matty Matheson a few months ago.
We have 17 or 18 shows on sale – some great ones like MGK, Nine Inch Nails, we just put K-pop on sale with Twice, we blew out the first show and we’re pretty much there on the second one already – so the shows have been fast and furious. The sales have been great, so everyone is excited, and that’s kind of what we expect here. We want to change the game and bring more entertainment, and diversified entertainment, whether that’s the Globetrotters, rock, metal, country. I think we’re doing a great job on that already.

When entering the venue, what’s going to be the biggest surprise to those who haven’t been paying attention, or the most notable change from the former arena?
Public-facing, what a lot of people are going to see when they come in are those lower-level suites. We built nine suites right into the lower bowl that you can walk out and look from your suite right out into the venue. Typically, you have those bunker suites where your suites are in the back, you kind of hang out and you come out to your seats. We just blew the whole wall out and now you’ve got a suite in the back and you walk out to the front. It’s totally game changing. It’s different. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like to see the first concert there or the first lacrosse game, or if there’s hockey in the building, you’re literally 10 feet from the glass in a suite. It’s a crazy experience.

That’s not really anything we’ve seen in the arena world. I think you might see it in some football stadiums here and there, but it’s a totally different and unique concept and something that’s unique to Hamilton, in our world. On top of that, we’ve got another 15 100-level suites. We are close, if not fully sold out, on all of them, so sales and the interest in that have been great.

On top of those, we’ve got an Event-Level Club, we’ve got the TD Lounge club, we’ve got the House of Peroni club, and we’ve got a Rogers club, we’ve got all these additional premium spaces that Hamilton never had before. Essentially, it was a few suites and some seats, and that’s what we had to offer, but we’ve kind of flipped all that around and added a bunch more premium spaces and opportunities for people to come and enjoy shows, do some hosting and get that full 360 experience, which again is different from what they would have experienced before.

How about some of the behind-the-scenes work?
The biggest focus, especially being a music-focused venue, is the back-of-house and artist spaces being totally redone. These are specifically designed lounges and rooms for artists to enjoy their time. We want to be different and unique, and the back-of-house spaces are a huge piece of that. People don’t necessarily notice the rigging grid, but that was a big problem in Hamilton before, just having to bridle everything, and the weight that you could hold. So we totally redid the rigging grid. We’re capable of hanging any show we need in that venue.

A new dasherboard is going to be installed for the season as well for lacrosse. We’ve got the LED ring, plus all of our new IPVs and concourse setups with our digital as well. So, those are enhancements that typically the venue wouldn’t have had before, and a totally new in-house sound system that’s far superior to anything we would have had before. When you’re talking about in-house events, whether that’s lacrosse or hockey or other events, it will be a lot better than anything they would’ve seen before in the venue.

You have some experience opening a new venue before, but not quite on this level.
We did Moncton in 2017, which was about a $110 million project. That one opened with Keith Urban. It was a different scope, at 8,500 seats and $100 million, a great facility. I tell everybody that doesn’t know about Moncton, and Canada per se, that it’s one of the nicest junior hockey venues in the country. There were a lot of local construction guys on that from the East Coast there, a lot of pride went into that building.

But, especially with OVG and Live Nation and the partners that we have and what we’ve put into this project and all the combined experience and industry knowledge, this building is second to none. We’ve really leveled up from most other venues, especially in the country. The people involved in this project kind of take it to a different level.

That experience must give you some confidence now in Hamilton, though.
Totally. It’s all about the people you work with in a lot of this. For example, I don’t control all the construction. You’re involved in the meetings, but you’ve got to trust and rely on your partners and the people that know what they’re doing. But it’s always good to have the experience of doing it once. Especially when you’re six weeks out, the email inbox is always full, there’s always requests coming in. It’s knowing what to manage, knowing what your priorities are and ultimately focusing on what you need to do to get it done.

It’s what I tell my staff, too. Everything is going to come at you. It’s going to be a whirlwind. Make sure you know your priorities and the key things you need to deliver, stick to that and don’t get caught in the whirlwind when you can, because it’s going to come.
Tell us more about your team.

The venue obviously existed before, and there’s a lot of great knowledge and experience on the team that was there, so we have a lot of those folks still on board with us. I was obviously involved in hires on the director side and the VP side mostly, and some of the senior directors. You have the Toronto market, you have a lot of great people in Canada that know sports and entertainment, so being able to draw from some of the people on the Toronto side, some people that I knew well from preexisting relationships, was key. This wasn’t just about opening another building, it’s about being different, being unique and being one of the best live entertainment venues in the country. So I wanted people to have that passion and that belief, and that was always part of the interview process. At the end of it, we came away with a great team, both a mix of people that were here previously and who we brought on board, people that are going to make this project great and make this venue super successful.

How about getting the word out to the public and industry that this is a whole new venue rather than just a name change or traditional renovation?
I think we’ve done a great job, especially with TD coming on board as the naming sponsor. That was a big boost for us, and then being able to build the marketing and build the branding out as a reinvented venue. As much as we call it a reimagination or not a total rebuild, we bring in $300 million and we never tore down the building, so you have a great footprint to work with, and we’ve totally been able to transform the venue inside and out. Our marketing was around rebranding with that, launching with TD as one of the best live entertainment venues in the country. That’s the brand and the message that we’ve pushed the whole time. That’s only going to be amplified as we get closer to opening.

What’s the local response like? How do you see TD Coliseum impacting the city of Hamilton itself?
I kind of saw it firsthand in Moncton and Kingston in previous times, where venues really were a catalyst for growth, and you start seeing shops and restaurants and bars come down here because people are down here for events. Everyone you talk to in Hamilton, whether it’s the business community or the city or anybody, is excited about what the venue’s going to bring and the opportunities it’s going to provide to do that, to revitalize downtown and make it a great spot for entertainment and people in general to come down and enjoy.

How about stepping on any toes with Toronto not too far away?
There’s 10 million people in the region and there’s been one 20,000-seat venue. Toronto is one of the biggest and greatest entertainment markets in North America for sure. People always ask me, are we going to be competitive with Toronto? I’m sure there’s going to be shows where we will have to go head-to-head and it’s going to be about deal structure and rebates and all the fun stuff that we get into, but we’re also totally OK with being a complementary venue, too. Everyone’s going to play Toronto. It’s one of the biggest markets in North America. It’s a destination for people to play, but they have two professional teams that occupy 82 days a year now in those venues, most of them on weekends.

So if an artist has to play Toronto and they can play two there and one down the road in Hamilton because the demand’s there, we’ll take that all day, too, or vice versa. I think we fit in well with being an hour away, being an amazing venue that can host anything, having amazing back-of-house and artist spaces and really being music-first. The market can absolutely sustain two venues. If you live on the west side of Toronto — if you’re living in Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington — sometimes you don’t want to go back down into the city. It’s painful to deal with traffic and getting in and out. So it can be way easier for you to come 30 minutes down the road to Hamilton, go against the traffic and come enjoy the show. That’s a big factor in drawing, too.

Any concern about a downturn in American tourism considering the news cycle lately?
Buffalo’s probably 45 minutes to an hour down the road and Detroit’s a little further, but look, it’s always part of the plan to draw people to events that we’re having. We have seen some decent numbers already from shows we put on sale from the U.S., so that’s all part of what we do. There are some factors out there right now, but I think what we’ve seen thus far is that people still want to come, so we’re excited to bring them in and show them what we got.