Manchester’s Co-op Live finally opens with Elbow gig after weeks of chaos

The troubled Co-op Live arena has offcially opened its doors, with rock band Elbow launching the new venue in Manchester last night.

On Tuesday (14 May), the £365m venue welcomed apprehensive fans, before Elbow, who hail from Manchester, took to the stage following support act The Waeve.

The biggest indoor arena in the UK had postponed its opening show for the third time after part of its ventilation and air conditioning system fell from the ceiling to the ground during a soundcheck ahead of rapper A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie’s planned performance in early May.

Elbow are celebrating the release of their 10th studio album Audio Vertigo with their first tour since 2018. Addressing the venue’s earlier issues, frontman Guy Garvey told the audience that those who had been working on the building had been “so excited today, so nervous and so excited”.

“There was already electricity in the air before you lot got in here and now it's fully amped up. I hope you can feel it,” he said.

Before concluding their set, Garvey told the crowd: “You've house-warmed this beautiful new venue, shall we sing one last song together?”

Issues at the arena began after a test event in April led to the rescheduling of comedian Peter Kay’s stand-up dates.

Kay, who was originally supposed to be the “first artist in the world to perform at Manchester Co-op Live”, had his shows postponed twice as the venue was not ready to open.

The problems also led to the venue rescheduling a Black Keys gig, along with dates for A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and pop star Olivia Rodrigo.

Before Tuesday evening's gig, Steve Jones, 58, from Rhyl in North Wales, told the PA news agency he was a “bit apprehensive” about everything going to plan.

“Hopefully everything goes OK,” he said. “It's been a long time in the coming, seeing all the other ones that have been cancelled, because we live 60-odd miles away and then you're thinking 'hope everything goes OK'.”

Nigel Thomas, 56 and from Chester, had come with family members, with one relative travelling from Hong Kong to see the band.

He said recent cancellations at the arena had left him feeling “scared” and “worried”.

“We [were] worried if it would go to another venue, possibly just be postponed, and we wouldn't all be able to meet and make it happen, so tonight feels a little bit weird, still a bit apprehensive that it hasn't actually started yet, so we've still got a few hours to go,” he said.

Tim Leiweke, chief executive of the arena's operator Oak View Group, explained that fittings in the arena had been “triple checked” after the May incident, which he said could have been “catastrophic” if it had happened just 15 minutes later.

He told BBC News he was confident it was now “the safest building in the world”, adding there had been “no way” operators could have known the ventilation was not installed correctly.

“They didn't put the bolts in. It wasn't visible to the eye,” he said. “And it fell out.

“So we [have since] got that double checked and triple checked. We've looked at thousands of bolts up in that ceiling now. We've looked at the life safety lines. And we were going to take our time to make sure we did this right.

“There was no way we were opening the doors until we checked every screw and every bolt and every one of those 95 shafts.”

The Co-op Live arena is a joint venture between Oak View Group, co-founded by Leiweke and US music mogul Irving Azoff, and City Football Group, owned by billionaire United Arab Emirates royal and deputy prime minister Sheikh Mansour. Pop star Harry Styles is among the other investors.

Additional reporting by Press Association