Coldplay kicked off their four-night takeover of Toronto’s Rogers Stadium on Monday, and although fans seemed to have a better experience inside the new venue than at last week’s inaugural show, a crowd management expert suggests there’s still room for improvement.
Kevin Kennedy, crowd management expert and the owner of Kennedy Crowd Safety Solutions, said it is normal for a new venue to have a bumpy opening.
“This is a new area, new facility, so there’s going to be some hiccups at the beginning, but those can be adjusted. I think the comparison between the first event and this event shows a marked difference in approach from Live Nation,” he told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, Live Nation Canada announced it was “making adjusments” to the 50,000-capacity Rogers Stadium following complaints about poor crowd management and long exit times at the venue’s first-ever show.
Some fans who attended the inaugural concert from K-pop group Stray Kids said it took up to two hours to leave, as the venue and transit services from Downsview Park seemed ill-equipped to handle the throngs of people coming in and out of the show.
Fans also complained about the long lines for bathrooms and limited water.
Kennedy said all of these issues could have been avoided if the venue had run test events.
“We’ve done test events at some events we’ve had for new facilities with [a] smaller crowd, just to see how crowd flows arrive, because crowd behavior can be predicted, but it can’t be predicted 100 per cent,” said Kennedy.
“We know that the transit has a certain amount of people that they can transport at any given time, and if demand is going to outweigh that and cause a huge delay, we’ve got to find another way to supplement that.”
He said there’s still room for improvement, and “a big part of that is the management side of things.”
“It’s an image thing for Live Nation. They don’t want to have bad publicity. They want to do everything they can to improve events because they’re going to have so many more events in the future at that site,” said Kennedy.
Coldplay in Toronto: What to expect at Rogers Stadium
During Monday’s show, Coldplay’s frontman, Chris Martin, thanked the crowd for going through all “the traffic and the travel and the trains and the waiting” to get to “this weird stadium in the middle of nowhere.”
Live Nation Canada added more staff inside and outside the venue for Coldplay’s show and also implemented clearer signage, extra water stations, and a new plan to funnel crowds toward three nearby subway stops instead of overwhelming the closest station, Downsview Park.
Rhys Parker, who attended Monday’s concert, said “it wasn’t a total train wreck.”
“It was exactly what I expected for a venue that’s built in nine months and has been open for a week,” he told Metro Morning on Tuesday.
The British rock band will perform three more shows at the venue, taking place between Tuesday and Saturday.
