Businessman behind The O2 arena plots rival stadium
Tim Leiweke tells Daniel Woolfson about his plans to build a 23,500-capacity live venue in west London
The man who made The O2 arena one of Britain’s most popular venues is plotting to build a new London stadium to rival his old employer. Tim Leiweke, the American businessman who has just completed the new £365m Co-op Live arena in Manchester, is in talks to build a new venue near Hammersmith.
The project, which is at an early stage, would be on a similar scale to his 23,500-capacity Manchester arena, putting it in direct competition with The O2 on the other side of London.
Mr Leiweke spent almost 20 years at Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), the US company that owns The O2. He has been described as the main architect of its success, transforming it from its previous incarnation as the Millennium Dome into one of the most popular concert venues in the UK.
He left AEG in 2013 to lead the Canadian sports giant Maple Leaf, then set up his own development company in 2015. He told The Sunday Telegraph he believed AEG had become complacent. Mr Leiweke said: “Phil [Anschutz, AEG’s billionaire owner] and I had almost a 20-year run, so no matter how he feels about us, I have nothing but good things to say about them. But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to take advantage of their shortness, their brain freeze or their level of comfort – and I think they got comfortable.”
The two sides previously clashed over the development of Co-op Live, which opens next week.
The new venue is just two miles from the AO Arena, which until recently was co-owned by AEG indirectly. Throughout the development process, AO Arena’s direct owner – a company called ASM Global that AEG backed – raised repeated objections to Mr Leiweke’s plans. (ASM was sold in November 2023 and is no longer linked to AEG.)
There is no love lost between the two sides. Mr Leiweke said of the rival arena: “I used to marvel because I’d walk through that arena and go, ‘Oh my God, this is just an absolutely terrible place to come to listen to a concert’. It was built for the Commonwealth Games, it was never built for music … The acoustics aren’t great, the customer service isn’t great.”
A spokesman for the AO Arena said it has spent £50m recently on “artist and fan experiences”. They said: “Our venue is legendary and has delighted millions of fans for over 30 years. Being a great venue isn’t something you can promise to be, you have to deliver and we have been delivering goosebump experiences for generations of fans for decades.” AEG declined to comment. Mr Leiweke’s Oak View Group, which is behind Co-op Live, ultimately overcame objections from its rival.
On Tuesday, the comedian Peter Kay will take the stage for the venue’s first show. Over the months to come the likes of Pearl Jam, Olivia Rodrigo, Slipknot, the Pet Shop Boys and Nicki
‘London is the best market in the world – it deserves to have the greatest arena in the world’
Minaj will perform there. Questions have been raised about whether a city of just over half a million people can sustain two 20,000-plus capacity arenas. Mr Leiweke is confident that won’t be a problem. “We were fortunate that the bet we made, which is that we’d see the single greatest live entertainment return and surge in the history of the industry [post-Covid], is what we’ve seen these last few years.”
Co-op Live, which counts Harry Styles as a co-investor, was built in partnership with City Football Group, the Abu Dhabi-backed owner of Manchester City. It sits adjacent to the club’s Etihad stadium on a vast so-called “campus” in the city’s east.
City Football Group is run by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who is usually referred to as Sheikh Mansour. The Manchester development is the latest attempt by the Sheikh to make his Premier League-conquering football assets yet more valuable.
Emirati investment in Britain has come under heightened scrutiny in recent months, after the UAE-backed bid to buy The Telegraph was effectively blocked by the Government over fears about a foreign state ownership of a major media asset. The arena development does not face the same obstacles. However, it is another sign of the increasingly close financial links between Britain and the Gulf Kingdom. It is not clear whether City Football Group or the UAE will be involved in Oak View Group’s plans for a new London venue.
Mr Leiweke expects the project to take about a year.
Asked where exactly it will be, he says: “If you guessed Hammersmith, it would be a good guess.
“We’re pretty focused on a particular site. We’re excited about the site. But I understand there’s a process and we need to talk to neighbours, we need to talk to the community, we need to talk to the business leaders, and we need to talk to political leaders.
“We’re going to play by their rules, I’m not going to get ahead of them.”
Similar recent projects have struggled to get off the ground. MSG Group, owner of New York’s Madison Square Garden, recently ditched plans to build a huge venue in east London after years of planning troubles.
MSG claimed the venue had become “a political football between rival political parties”. London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Michael Gove, the Housing Secretary, had clashed over it. James Dolan, MSG’s chief, said trying to get it off the ground was like “banging our heads against the wall”.
Mr Leiweke said: “It’s a lost opportunity for all, I feel bad for Jim, he put a lot of money into that project.”
Many see the collapse of the project as emblematic of wider struggles to get things built in London.
Mr Leiweke is undeterred: “I am not altered in my enthusiasm for the opportunity. No disrespect to New York or Los Angeles, but London is the best market in the world, especially for live entertainment. London deserves to have the greatest arena in the world. They don’t yet.”
He is similarly upbeat on the UK’s appeal for overseas investors, despite gloomy official forecasts predicting a 5pc contraction in business investment this year.
Mr Leiweke said: “I don’t think anyone needs to come to me and give me a pep talk about the UK. You probably kick yourself more than you should. If I had concerns, questions, or even recommendations, I guess we wouldn’t be spending £365m now, would we?”
If red tape doesn’t get in the way, that sum may just be the start.