Yahoo Finance O2 Arena mastermind plots rival London stadium
Tim Leiweke, the American businessman who has just spent £365m on building the new Co-op Live arena in Manchester, is in talks to open a second arena near Hammersmith.
Mr Leiweke spent almost 20 years at Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and has been described as the main architect of the O2’s success and a pivotal figure in transforming it from its previous incarnation as the Millennium Dome.
AEG is presided over by the notoriously secretive American billionaire Philip Anschutz, who made his fortune in the oil industry. It owns hundreds of venues across the world.
“Phil 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,” says Leiweke.
He left AEG in 2013 to lead the Canadian sports giant Maple Leaf, then set up his own development company, Oak View Group, in 2015. He told the Telegraph he believed AEG had become complacent, as he seeks to expand in the capital.
“[The fact we worked together] 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 parties have already clashed over the development of Co-op Live in Manchester, which opens next week, when comedian Peter Kay will take the stage for the venue’s first show. Over the coming months the likes of Pearl Jam, Olivia Rodrigo, Slipknot and Nicki Minaj will perform on its stage.
The huge arena, which counts Harry Styles as a major investor, was built in partnership with City Football Group, the Abu Dhabi-backed owner of Manchester City, and sits adjacent to the club’s Etihad stadium on a vast so-called “campus” east of the city.
Leiweke’s bet with Co-op Live is that it will tap into growing appeal for what has been dubbed “multi-purpose” venues that combine sports, eating out and other forms of entertainment, which have soared since the end of the pandemic.
“We were fortunate that the bet we made – that we’d see the single greatest live entertainment return and surge in the history of the industry – is what we’ve seen these past few years,” he says.
It comes as Emirati investment is coming under increasing scrutiny, after the UAE-backed bid to buy The Telegraph was effectively blocked by the Government amid fears over the impact of a foreign state owning major media assets.
Crucially though, Co-op Live is just two miles from Manchester’s AO Arena, which until recently was part of a company part-owned by AEG. Throughout the development process, that company – called ASM Global – raised repeated objections to Leiweke’s plans. ASM was sold in November 2023 and is no longer linked to AEG.
Leiweke says he’s not worried about competition with the other arena. “I used to marvel because I’d walk through that arena and think, ‘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,” he says, pointing out that when what is now the AO Arena was constructed in the 1990s, much of its funding came from government grants.
“We invested the largest single sum of money ever spent on an arena outside of the US in the history of the industry.
“When you want to be an entrepreneur and to make an investment in Manchester, in Britain, come have this fight with me. And then we’ll have an equal fight.”
A spokesman for the AO Arena says it has spent £50m recently on “artist and fan experiences”.
“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.”
Plans to build a massive venue in west London would put Leiweke in direct competition with his former boss Anschutz again. Leiweke expects the project to take about a year “before it gets real” but says early conversations with authorities had been positive.
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 to political leaders. We’re going to play by their rules, I’m not going to get ahead of them.”
Yet other developers have struggled to get large-scale projects built in the capital recently.
MSG Group, the owner of Madison Square Garden in New York, abandoned plans to build a huge “Sphere” venue in East London after six years of planning troubles.
MSG claimed the venue had become “a political football between rival political parties”. Sadiq Khan and Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, had clashed over the scheme.
The embittered company said it would instead seek out “forward-thinking cities around the world that are serious about bringing this next-generation entertainment experience to their communities”.
“It’s a lost opportunity for all,” says Leiweke. “I feel bad for Jim [Dolan, MSG Group’s chief executive], he put a lot of money into that project. I also think the Sphere is literally one of the marvels and wonders of society today.”
However, many see the collapse of the Sphere project as emblematic of wider concerns that an excess of red tape and planning delays are making it harder to get things built in London.
Plans to redevelop Earl’s Court have repeatedly been scaled back over a planning process plagued by delays and objections, while Marks & Spencer spent much of the last year embroiled in a row with Michael Gove over plans to redevelop its Marble Arch store.
Leiweke dismisses suggestions that he may run into trouble in the capital. “I am not deferred in this mission statement, I am not altered in my enthusiasm for the opportunity,” he says.
“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.
“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,” he says.
“If I had concerns, questions or even recommendations, I guess we wouldn’t be spending £365m now, would we?”
For now, all eyes will be on the opening of Co-op Live in Manchester and whether the Northern city really does have space for two major stadiums.
But as plans are put in place to expand in the capital, the stage is being set for another showdown.
