Concert Venues - Post #1 - Large Arenas

Concert venues come in all shapes and sizes. Here in the UK, we have several massive arenas holding many thousands of people. There are also plenty of quirky, intimate venues which provide a somewhat different concert going experience. In a short series of blog posts, I am going to explore my thoughts on the different types of settings in which we can enjoy live music.

Large arenas

The very biggest acts are able to sell out the largest arenas our country has to offer, sometimes over multiple days. These days the tickets for some of these gigs are expensive and yet it can still be so difficult getting a ticket, such is often the demand to see the most popular artists. I recall trying to get a ticket to the Queen and Adam Lambert tour back in 2017 and ended up with a ticket two rows from the back. That was achieved by doing the stereotypical frantic F5 pressing on the website ticket page as soon as they went on sale.

Almost without exception, the large arenas are multi purpose and they host a wide variety of events, only one of which might be live music. More often than not, in my experience it hasn't been great from an audio and visual point of view. Unless you're lucky enough to get a ticket close to the stage, I've quite often ended up having to squint and watch the artist on a video screen. If the arena does not have a video screen then it becomes more of a listening experience, still enjoyable but I do like to be able to see the artist performing as well as hear them.

Tedeschi Trucks Band - Wembley Arena, London

1st February, 2020

I’m no sound expert at all and I appreciate how difficult a job it must be for the engineers at a large venue, especially as each artist will have different setups, bands and equipment. It must be a very tricky job for them to get it exactly right with such a wide range of different performers. This is especially the case at a festival like County to Country at the O2 Arena in London, where there are multiple artists on the same stage in the space of a few hours. The sound quality can be very variable, but this is not just restricted to one venue. I have attended amongst others Manchester Arena, Birmingham Arena, O2 Arena and Wembley Arena and they have all had their issues.

I have made peace with the fact that if I want to see the big acts, inflated prices and less than perfect sound and sight of the artists will be something I will have to deal with. From a financial and logistical point of view, why would an artist play in a 1,000 capacity theatre when they could be performing in front of 20,000 people over several evenings?

This post may come across as somewhat negative and, as a whole, I don’t want it to come across that way. After all, my top two gigs of all time – Chris Stapleton and Ashley McBryde – were both in the O2 Arena, London.

Chris Stapleton - Country to Country Festival - O2 Arena, London

10th March, 2019

I do fear that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it may be some time before large arena gigs are possible.

Photos by myself, Chris Swinden