Negative stories about Rogers Stadium are ‘branding poison' for the sponsor, marketers say

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2 days ago

Concert-goers wait to enter Downsview Station as they exit Rogers Stadium in Toronto, Monday, July 7, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sammy Kogan
TORONTO — As a marketing expert, Markus Giesler was aghast after hearing Coldplay frontman Chris Martin blast Toronto's brand new Rogers Stadium onstage.
'It sent shivers down my spine,' Giesler said of Martin's comments at the 50,000-capacity venue built to attract big acts to the city over the next five years.
When he took the stage Monday night, Martin thanked fans for persevering through logistical challenges to get 'to this weird stadium in the middle of nowhere,' adding to early complaints from ticketholders about poor crowd control and transit woes to access the location in Toronto's North York suburb.
Giesler, a professor at York University's Schulich School of Business, said that's 'the worst case of sponsorships,' for the telecommunication giant, whose name is on the outdoor venue operated by Live Nation on land owned by Northcrest Developments.
'It's the kind of branding poison that you're trying to avoid at all costs,' he said.
Experts say that's the risk that comes with putting your name on a facility you don't own.
As of Wednesday, Rogers spokesman Zac Carreiro said Live Nation has been improving the venue's operations and 'we know they will continue to make enhancements at the stadium.'
A Live Nation Canada spokesperson said those adjustments include 'improving crowd flow, easing traffic congestion, enhancing accessibility and comfort to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for all guests.'
'We're pleased to see the changes have already had a positive impact,' the Live Nation Canada spokesperson said in an email.
Still, the early impressions could cast a shadow over Rogers' reputation, Giesler said.
'When the spotlight is on the venue, the brand's name shines just as brightly, both in a good and in a bad way. And that has to do with the fact that the fan experience, in some sense, almost directly translates to how we think and how we feel about a brand,' he said.
If the fan experience is great, he said, customers are more likely to have a positive association with the brand attached to it.
For instance, last year Rogers billed itself as the company that brought Taylor Swift to Canada for six sold-out nights in Toronto and three final shows in Vancouver that many fans described as a highlight.
But the inverse is also true, even if Rogers isn't in charge of the experience.
'I don't think anyone really knows that Live Nation is operationally in charge. But that's the kind of assumptions that we have. The place says Rogers, clearly Rogers must be in charge, right? But that's not the case,' said Giesler.
Claire Tsai, a marketing professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, noted that Rogers' size means it's big enough to absorb the negative press, with millions of customers unlikely to change their telecom provider based on a bad concert experience.
'For existing Rogers customers, I think this is probably not going to affect them too much. But for people who are considering switching brands, maybe right now the sentiment is a little on the negative side. They may hesitate.'
However, she doesn't believe the complaints around the stadium are likely to last.
'The venue will figure out a way to solve these problems,' she said, suspecting some complaints have been blown out of proportion.
One thing that's less changeable is the venue's location. It's on the far outskirts of the city, roughly 15 kilometres north of the downtown core. It could take an hour or more to get there by subway from Union Station, the city's main transit hub, including a trek that's more than a kilometre from the nearest subway station.
Again on Tuesday, the Coldplay frontman referenced how remote it was, calling it a 'very bizarre stadium a million miles from Earth.'
'We are solely testing the premise 'if you build it they will come,'' Martin quipped. 'I'm very grateful that you did come.'
But the location was a source of confusion for some, who thought they were attending a show at the similarly named Rogers Centre, located downtown.
Brian Ellis, who came to the show from Detroit, was among the concertgoers who booked accommodations next to the Rogers Centre under the mistaken belief he'd be able to walk to the show on Monday.
Instead, he walked a half-hour from the Sheppard West subway station where he parked his car.
On the positive side, with Rogers Stadium, the company is now associated with a purpose-built concert venue that can attract acts such as Coldplay and Oasis, said Michael Naraine, a professor of sport management at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont.
Large musical acts have had to compete with sporting events for time slots at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena and the Rogers Centre, a problem Rogers Stadium was meant to address.
The Rogers Centre — which is both owned and operated by the telecom company — also recently went through renovations that mean seats on the 100 level are no longer pointed toward the centre of the venue. Instead, they're directed toward home base. It makes sense when the venue is being used for baseball, but not so much when it comes to other uses, he said.
'If you're ... a concert venue where the central act is going to be in the middle, you can't really have your seats focused off stage right,' Naraine said.
But the Rogers Stadium won't be a long-term solution to Toronto's concert crunch, as it's temporary by design.
Located near the former Downsview Airport, the site has been earmarked for a massive live-work-play development that's expected to house more than 100,000 people upon its completion in a few decades.
In the meantime, University of Guelph marketing professor Timothy Dewhirst said there may not be much incentive to drastically improve the customer experience for concertgoers, given that Live Nation and Rogers own much of the city's other medium-to-large concert halls.
'Often if there is that kind of concentration of the market there can be complacency. There isn't sufficient competition of an alternative,' Dewhirst said. 'It often leads to higher prices, and anyone that's attended a music or sports event in Toronto can probably attest that it's gotten very expensive.'
If music lovers want to see massive acts such as Oasis — who is performing two nights in August on their only stop in Canada — while avoiding the trek to Downsview, they'll likely have to travel even farther: to Montreal or Detroit.
'To see them in Toronto, there really is not an alternative other than maybe to decide not to go,' Dewhirst said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 9, 2025.
By Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press
-With files from Natasha Baldin