Why are so many massive music arenas being built in the UK?

Manchester, London, Gateshead, Cardiff, Bristol, Sunderland, Dundee, Edinburgh: all of these cities and towns are on track to get a shiny new music arena over the next decade or so. That’s right: we may already have a whopping 21 mega concert venues across the country, but at least eight more are currently being built or are in the planning stages. 

So, do we really need all of these vast new concert spaces? And why are are so many on track to be built?

Some places, like Bristol, are simply lacking large-capacity performance spaces. More than 16 million people can reach the city within two hours by car, which is similar to somewhere like Manchester (where they’re currently building a second arena, in addition to the 21,000-capacity AO Arena). And yet there’s no big music venue to satisfy the city’s music fans.

‘It’s well documented that Bristol is one of the last remaining core cities in the UK not to have an arena,’ says Andrew Billingham, CEO of Bristol’s YTL Arena Complex. ‘It’s massively underserved. Bristol has always been on the radar of promoters, and now that we’re coming forward with a 19,000-cap venue, our phone is ringing on a weekly basis.’

YTL will be built around old aircraft hangars, and feature an arena, an exhibition and conference hall, and a film and TV studio. Construction is on track to start early next year, with plans to open in early 2026. 

Meanwhile, other proposed arenas – like London’s Madison Square Garden Sphere – claim to bring something new to the entertainment landscape with hyper-modern facilities. The massive orb-shaped venue in London, which is currently at stage two of its planning-application process, is the brainchild of the US-based Madison Square Garden Company, behind the live-music venue of the same name in Manhattan. It’s also opening a similar spherical venue in Las Vegas, scheduled to open later this year. 

‘London has a population of nearly 8.8 million, which is almost identical to New York City at 8.5 million, but while the London market has two large-scale capacity venues, the New York market has seven,’ said a spokesperson for MSG Sphere. 

They claim that the London venue would include the largest and highest-resolution LED screen in the world, as well as ‘crystal-clear audio’ and a ‘haptic system’ that will allow the audience to literally feel the bass. Due to the high-spec facilities, it’s expected that artists will play residencies here, rather than one-off shows.

It’s not just a matter of gaps in the market, though. The UK has a rich history of live music and some mammoth legacy acts – from the Rolling Stones to Robbie Williams – who are seducing international investors to hop on the arena bandwagon. But unless they pull off some sort of ABBA Voyage-style stunt, the likes of the Stones probably won’t be around for ever. So, just how sustainable is it for the live-music industry to rely on a small set of arena-filling acts?

What are these venues doing to ensure that there are headliners on stage in five, ten, 20 years’ time?

‘What are these [arena] companies doing to ensure that there are headliners on stage for them in five, ten, 20 years’ time?’ asks Mark Davyd, CEO of the Music Venue Trust, which recently launched its annual report about the state of the sector. ‘What is their approach towards research and development in order to make sure that they've got that pipeline of artists reaching a certain point in their career?’

Davyd argues that these arenas are heavily reliant upon small venues, small-town promoters and local communities to produce the next generation of talent that they need to fill their thousands of seats, and that they need to do more to ensure that new talent will come through in the future. He suggests a model where top-level promoters make a financial contribution to grassroots music – for example, a 50p levy on each arena ticket could be passed onto smaller venues.

All of this chat comes amid an ongoing outcry over eye-watering ticket prices. ‘If people are paying £200 to see Madonna and she’s selling out arenas, that’s her worth as an artist,’ says Davyd. ‘But 50p extra on each of these arena tickets would be enough to secure new talent and to ensure that local venues across the country won’t close down.’

Most of the obscenely priced tickets we’ve heard about recently can be put down to the so-called dynamic ticket-pricing model, which matches high-demand artists to ticket prices via an algorithm. It’s the artist who’s in control of what they charge – not the venue. ‘What we can control is making sure it’s an affordable night out,’ says Billingham of YTL, adding that the Bristol arena will make sure on-site bars and restaurants are affordable for customers.

Despite this, it does seem peculiar that eight new arenas are being built at a time when – according to the Music Venue Trust – one grassroots music venue is closing down per week in the UK, with more than 35 percent of all small concert spaces having shut over the past 20 years. It’s one of the reasons why the organisation launched its Music Venue Properties (MVP) project last May, which aims to create a ‘National Trust of music venues’, enabling fans and communities to effectively own their local venues, protecting them from closure. They’ve raised almost £2.5 million so far to kick-start the public-ownership model. 

And the eight new venues we’ve heard about don’t even tell the full story. There could be two more potentially in the pipeline. ‘My understanding is that there are plans for another [arena] in the north-east, around the Newcastle-Middlesbrough area, and one in the south-west, near Plymouth,’ says Davyd. Of course, there’s no guarantee that all of these venues will even be built: huge sums of money are involved in the process, there are various planning-application hoops to jump through, and, of course, we’re in an ongoing cost of living crisis.  

Meanwhile, Billingham says that YLT has already ‘started to look at plans of how we can engage with community and grassroot venues’, and that it will announce those plans closer to opening. So don’t hold your breath, but if support does come through for the next generation of artists? It could be a very exciting time to be a music lover.

Read more: could fan-owned venues be the future of live music?