Executive Profile: World Cup Already Paying Off For Vancouver’s BC Place And GM Chris May

BC Place general manager Chris May is already seeing long-term returns from the Vancouver stadium’s recent CAD$178 million ($125M) renovation, undertaken in order to host seven FIFA World Cup matches, June 13 to July 7. That’s four “group stage” matches (now passed), two knockout round matches, “group of 32” on July 2 and “group of 16” on July 7.

The FIFA World Cup 2026 costs for PavCo are within the range of $178-$185 million total, for both capital and operation costs

With new event spaces — such as Corner Club (cap. 200 seated to 600 GA) and Field Club (cap.1000) — May hopes the upgrades will help the 54,000-seat stadium attract smaller-scale events, such as concerts, fashion shows, conferences and meetings. There are also newly renovated suites and dressing rooms, accessibility improvements, a permanent merch shop, premium bar/fan zone, upgraded technology, and the FIFA-mandated hybrid grass pitch. 

“It was about spreading those dollars out and making the most impact and then giving our team here the assets to grow the business and build a better BC Place and do events every day of the year well into the future,” May tells Pollstar.

The stadium, which received international attention for the three-night finale of Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” in December 2024, already runs about 100 events a year, including Vancouver Whitecaps FC and BC Lions games, Rugby SVNS, and other major international sporting events; trade shows, banquets and holiday parties, film shoots, and community events, plus, of course, concerts.  

This year is BC Place’s busiest concert year in its 43-year-history. There will be 10, half of which from Bruno Mars, plus AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Noah Kahan, and Foo Fighters, all post-World Cup, from August to October. The only show before the FIFA takeover was Indian superstar Diljit Dosanjh, who kicked off his “Aura World Tour” there in April. 

Soccer has had a long history at the venue. Its first ever sporting event was a Vancouver Whitecaps vs Seattle Sounders match on June 20, 1983, with over 60,000 in attendance. The Whitecaps and various other iterations of the team played at BC Place throughout the 1980s and 1990s, mostly for exhibition matches, then in 2011 the Whitecaps joined the MLS and made their league debut at BC Place, where they’ve been playing ever since. 

The LA Galaxy, featuring international soccer star and celebrity David Beckham, played there in 2007. The 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup was hosted there, as well as numerous Canada soccer matches, both men’s and women’s.  Last year, there was a CONCACAF Gold Cup match (Canada vs. Honduras) and the Whitecaps played Inter Miami CF, the first time Lionel Messi played in Vancouver. The Whitecaps won, then won again in Miami, becoming the first club to win their first two matches against Messi.

BC Place is unlike any of the other 15 North American stadiums approved by FIFA to host the 2026 World Cup because it is a Crown corporation (a division of PavCo), owned by the government, meaning there’s no corporate naming rights to be temporarily removed on the building. 

“We’re an independent corporation with a board of directors, but we have a single shareholder and that shareholder is the government [Crown} of British Columbia,” May says. “We have a mandate not just for operational and financial success, but also to maximize community benefit, to maximize economic and tourism development. Our bottom line is not just financial.”

Toronto’s BMO Field, for example, is now Toronto Stadium.

According to the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport, the seven matches will draw approximately 350,000 spectators to BC Place; approximately 1 million additional out-of-province visitors to B.C. during the tournament, and over the next five years is expected to add about $1 billion to B.C.’s GDP.

May, who was born in British Columbia and raised in Adelaide, Australia, was a tour manager for Cirque Du Soleil when BC Place underwent a $514 million renovation in 2011 (on par with US dollars at that time). He joined BC Place as GM in 2022 after eight-plus years at SDImktg, the last 32 months as vice-president, delivery and production & executive producer and almost six years as senior director, entertainment. 

He says he lost his voice at the Canada vs. Qatar game on Thursday, June 18, when the men’s team won their first-ever World Cup game on home soil, 6-0, and he did not get it back again until midday on Sunday. “I screamed probably louder than I should have in a professional environment.” 

With his voice in full working order, May talked to Pollstar after the first Canada win but before the Canada loss on Wednesday. 

Pollstar: You were there cheering on Canada, but as the GM of BC Place were you also looking around noticing what upgrades the fans are enjoying? 

Chris May: I’m looking at all of it. The centre-hung scoreboard that was replaced is now 4K and beautiful. We completely upgraded our guest Wi-Fi system. Before, if you came here to concerts or games that were sold out, we had to shut down the Wi-Fi after about 6,000 people logged on. It can now take 60,000 users at one time. 

One thing we’re also noticing is the difference that our elevators are making to accessibility. And the speed. We used to have three passenger elevators for 55,000 people. So, we doubled the number of passenger elevators. BMO [Field in Toronto], their regular setup has about 30,000 people — not their World Cup setup — and they have six elevators. 

And then, I’m looking a lot at some of the new spaces that have been built. While all of those spaces or renovations were done because it started with a FIFA requirement, our job was to go, ‘OK, this is what FIFA wants, but here’s what BC Place needs to build its business for the next 15 years. And bring those together.’ 

The last big reno to BC Place was in 2011. So, what was the costliest upgrade this time?

It’s a large amount of money and we’re being very careful with what was spent. Elevators don’t come cheap.  Three new elevators. Renovating upwards of 35,000, 40,000 square feet of space outside of that. A new centre-hung video board is in the millions of dollars. Wi-Fi upgrades, similar. The pitch itself is a considerable amount. So, there isn’t really one single thing that I could point to. You’re renovating a 40-year-old building, and, like you said, the last opportunity we had to do this was 15 years ago. A very good chance that this kind of money isn’t spent on this building again for another 15 or 20 years. So, it was about spreading those dollars out and making the most impact and then giving our team here the assets to grow the business and build a better BC Place and do events every day of the year well into the future.

Unlike BMO Field, which did not have the required seating capacity and had to rent temporary bleachers, you’re a stadium. You’ve got the capacity. What didn’t you have?

What we don’t have that BMO does have is all of those surrounding parking lots. 

But, the lots are closed for the World Cup, used as part of Toronto Stadium grounds.

They’re for the stadium surround area.  You have to create an outer perimeter. We don’t have that. BMO is surrounded by thousands and thousands of just parking lot spaces. We have like 137. It’s nothing. So, we’ve had to close Pacific Boulevard [a thoroughfare street downtown], and we’ve had to rent a lot of private land to cobble together the space and the security perimeter that we needed. So that was a huge difference. BMO basically could just put up their fence line. We had to go and find the land. We’ve got a unique setup. So that was something that was really different for us.

The other is the grass pitch. We are more of a multi-purpose stadium than BMO is. This year, we will have 10 concert nights at BC place, which is our most ever. We’ve got the Whitecaps; we’ve got the Lions; we’ve got all those different events. We have a ton of community events that need the floor down. So, we usually operate with turf, not grass, but of course for FIFA, you’ve got to put in a pitch. So, we came up with a great solution. That’s entirely made in the lower mainland and made in BC solutions. We had our grass grown out in the Fraser Valley [Bos Sod Farms Inc.]. We had our construction firm based out of Langley [Wilco Civil Inc.] and we had our designers based out of Burnaby [Binnie – R.F. Binnie & Associates Ltd.). It was really great situation. 

Taylor Swift ended “The Eras” global tour at your stadium. There were fans just happy to be hanging outside. Did you learn anything during that to apply to how you’re operating for World Cup? 

I would say from my career, the attention on the last three shows of “The Eras Tour” was like nothing I have seen ever anywhere at any point in my career, and having the teams every move in the paper or talked about on radio or online, having people camped out around the building, trying to take pictures and post updates, having people book hotel rooms so they could see into the stadium to observe what our team was doing — and that winding up on the front page of European newspapers — there is not a pressure like that from a public relations and a global attention standpoint. Having our team get used to that was a huge thing because now they are a little bit like, “That’s OK, people are going to write about us. The photos might show up, but our job is our job ,and we need to make sure people have a great experience at BC Place, that they’re safe, that they have memorable times.” Our people are well-trained and they’re not worrying about some of that other stuff that they might hear or see when they’re scrolling through their social media. 

I want to show you something [he shows a white hardhat blinged out with his last name on the back]. I walked into the production office after the Saturday night Taylor Swift show, the second show, and, apparently, I hadn’t been wearing my hard hat on load-in and that tour is very safety conscious. They just want to make sure their people are taken care of, everybody’s safe. So, I walked in after the Saturday night show and one of our promoters and her tour manager gave me this and they had bedazzled it themselves and I absolutely wear it. I wear it with pride. People are looking at me crazy. And I’m like, “Are you kidding me? I’m sorry, did Taylor Swift’s team make you a hard hat with your name on it? They did not.” I will wear this for the rest of my career.

Are you missing out on any concerts during this season because you can’t book anything for the duration of the World Cup?

I have to go back two years in my mind because stadium tours are being held 18 months to two years. 

You’re not getting Ed Sheeran and BTS. Is that because of the World Cup? 

I don’t think so.  We’re a highly scheduled building. Apart from Rogers Centre in Toronto that’s got 82 baseball games a year, we’re running upwards of 100 events, which is enormous for a stadium. I’m not sure if we missed out. Pre-pandemic, our average concerts were one to two a year. The year of “The Eras Tour,” we had seven. Last year, we only had three, and that was because we deliberately said no to a few because we had to get construction done. This year, we had Diljit Dosanjh in April. We launched his second global stadium tour [Aura World Tour]. He loves this building and wanted to start here. So, we made that work, but we come out of FIFA and from mid-August to mid-October, we’ve got AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Noah Kahan, Foo Fighters and five Bruno Mars shows. So, that’ll be 10 nights this year, which is our busiest concert year in history by three shows, which is huge for us. And, we executed the World Cup. So, I can’t remember whether we turned anything down.

Are those nine of 10 shows squished into August, September and October because of the World Cup?

It’s definitely compressed over here when you’re losing 16 stadiums [to the World Cup]. I mean, not a ton of the stadium tours go through Guadalajara or Monterrey, but Mexico City they do, so you’ve got a large number of big stadiums that are out of place. So, we’re seeing that compression into that timeframe for sure. I think ‘27 is going to be an interesting year. We got quite a few holds in there as well. 

Anyone that’s been to Vancouver knows it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world — if it’s not raining. Having done these upgrades, what is some of the outreach you’re doing into areas that maybe people don’t look at BC Place for? Conferences? Trade shows? 

That’s exactly right. Every stadium or major venue now is trying to become 365. How are we generating revenue and providing return every single day of the year? And as we all know, those of us that run stadiums, arenas, that can be tough. Stadiums are tougher than arenas because of how quick you can flip an arena. So, it’s providing the ability to generate that revenue every day. 

How? Through the renos. Now we have, essentially, two in-house conference centers and meeting spaces that have the ability to host groups of three to 400 people, have attached breakout rooms, suites for events, breakout rooms for conferences, have food service areas, dedicated kitchen areas, and, most importantly, separate access and entrances from street level via elevators to those spaces. So, whereas you used to need to come in one entrance and walk three-quarters of the way around a concourse in the stadium to find the space, now you pull up outside, you’re into a lobby elevator and direct into the space. And we can run those spaces totally independent from each other.  

Also, our field or tunnel club space now, which is down under the stands right next to the field, it would be an amazing space for smaller concerts, fashion shows, things like that. So, what it’s done for us is provide the event sales team the ability to access those new markets. And, Vancouver is low on space for that kind of thing as it is, so already it’s going very well. 

Anything to add?

It’s important to remember that it’s not just the stadium, that there’s a real team effort in Vancouver. While we’re talking about the stadium and what it means for the future of the stadium, there’s an amazing Host Committee. Our Destination [Vancouver] marketing organizations, we’ve got that incredible Science World wrapped as the soccer ball. Vancouver is really showing off right now and it’s welcoming the world. We got to have a lot of attention at the stadium because we’re what the games are, but there’s an amazing Fan Festival at PNE Fairgrounds.  There’s viewing parties all over the space. The transportation system is amazing. Our airport’s operating perfectly. It’s really beautiful.