After hundreds of millions of pounds of investment and three years of construction, is Manchester’s newest arena a ‘shitshow’?

Dear readers — “Co-op Live? CO-OP Live? CO-OP…Live?” 

Yes (if it wasn’t incredibly obvious), that was us ingeniously re-working Peter Kay’s famous “garlic bread” routine to riff on Manchester's £365 million arena. To those of you who had tickets to Kay’s planned show at the brand new venue, we hope it offers you a little window into what might have been. Because sadly, it’s been postponed just 24 hours before the event was due to start. It isn’t the first setback the venue has encountered, either. So what’s gone wrong?

That story is below, plus:

• The homeless camp has ended, and Manchester City Council has offered 51 rough sleepers a place in temporary accommodation to get them off the streets. But why did five people choose to remain?

• As people find it harder to make organic connections in the digital age, friend-finding apps and meet-up groups are all the rage. Do they work?

Last week, Harry Robinson’s feature about a gender-inclusive football league in Manchester got a lot of praise. “This is the kind of story that makes me dare to believe humans are going to be alright after all,” wrote Mill member Helen Wood. On Friday, we revisited South Manchester, where there are fears that longstanding safe Labour areas might be vulnerable to losing votes to George Galloway’s new party, the Workers Party of Britain. If you missed it, catch up here.

And over the weekend, we published an in-depth profile of Ian Simpson and Rachel Haugh, the architects behind the glass-sheathed skyscrapers that have come to symbolise the New Manchester. That piece received a lot of lovely comments, including from Mill member Niall Power, who wrote: “I’ve come to the conclusion the Mill is the best place to turn to for balanced coverage of the regeneration of Manchester.” Guess what, we agree.

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What’s your ‘wild’ place?

From today’s sponsor: Manchester wants to become a 'greener' city that embraces nature, but how can that be achieved given the scale of new development? That’s one of the many questions explored by a fascinating new exhibition called Wild, which opens at Manchester Museum on 5 June. Wild will explore how people are creating and repairing connections with nature, from post-industrial urban landscapes like Manchester to Aboriginal-led cultural revegetation projects in Western Australia and the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the US.

We’d love you to take part. Just email us a photo and a short description of your favourite “wild” space in the local area, whether it’s the site of an abandoned mill or a lovely spot in your local park. Our favourite ones will be published in future newsletters and you will get a free curator’s tour of the exhibition. Read more about Wild here.

⛅️ This week’s weather

After a lovely weekend, we can expect more sunshine but slightly cooler weather this week. Gardeners: beware of the risk of overnight frost.

Tuesday ⛅️ Cloudy with bright spells at times. Breezy. 13°C.

Wednesday ⛅️ A mix of cloudy and bright periods with the slight risk of a shower during the afternoon. 12°C.

Thursday 🌦️ Sunny spells interspersed with April showers. Feeling chilly. 11°C.

Friday 🌦️ Mixed weather once again consisting of sunny spells and showers. 12°C.

Weekend 🌦️ Milder but unsettled with rain at times.

You can find the latest forecast at Manchester Weather on Facebook — daily forecasts are published at 6.15am.

The big story: After hundreds of millions of pounds of investment and three years of construction, is Manchester’s newest arena a ‘shitshow’?

Top line: Co-op Live, the £365m, 23,500 seat arena that has been three years in the making, has postponed its two opening shows by comedian Peter Kay at the final hour. It comes after it had to cancel some 7,000 tickets to its VIP launch event hours before it started over the weekend, “to enable us to test the spaces effectively”, according to its bosses.

Context: City Football Group — owned by UAE royal Sheikh Mansour — and Oakview Music Group are Co-op Live’s main backers. Other minor partners include Harry Styles and promoters Gaiety and SJM. 

• Construction started in May 2021.

• The arena will also have the largest capacity of any indoor arena in the country.

• It is already slated to host names like Eric Clapton, The Eagles, Olivia Rodrigo and the MTV European Music Awards.

But on Saturday night, issues with power supply affected fire safety and the arena’s emergency services communication system, so attendance at the arena’s VIP test event, a Rick Astley gig, was cut from 11,000 to 4,000. Insiders tell the MEN it “was run down to the wire”.

• Some were told at 4pm Saturday that their tickets were cancelled. Others on social media said they were told less than an hour before the event.

• They have been compensated with tickets to see the Black Keys at the venue next Saturday.

Reaction: Alison Stafford-Bentley, a Rick Astley fan, said her ticket was cancelled just 50 minutes before the event was meant to start. “Absolutely fuming,” she posted on X. Stafford-Bentley, who has mobility issues, was already on her way to the arena when she was informed her ticket was cancelled. Another would-be attendee tweeted: “Invitational tickets to the test event tonight cancelled just 90 minutes before doors open. What kind of shit show is this?”

The chaos is in keeping with the bumpy build-up to the opening. Co-op Live has been in a row with the AO Arena over licensing and how late it should be allowed to open. The whole thing had a “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us” vibe. And, it continues to have its ankles nipped by a “quite aggressive” campaign mounted by the Music Venue Trust to have the arena donate £1 of every ticket as a “grassroots levy” to fund local independent venues, something it seems pretty unwilling to do.

And now, during what must have been a race against time to get the venue in shape for opening night, the arena’s first two shows have been postponed because, bosses say, there is still work needing to be done. “It is critical to ensure we have a consistent total power supply to our fully electric sustainable venue, the completion of which is a few days behind,” a spokesperson said. Manchester City Council’s building control hasn't signed the venue off, so Kay’s two shows, supposed to be tomorrow and Wednesday, will be pushed back a week.

• A spokesperson for Co-op Live said: “Following our first test event on Saturday, regretfully we have made the difficult decision to reschedule our two opening performances by Peter Kay.”

• Kay said he was “truly gutted”.

Unfinished: A video posted on X showed wires hanging from the ceiling and poking out of walls in the venue, and hard hats left out. “The state of co-op live arena, and it’s supposed to open officially in a few days,” read the obviously unimpressed caption. 

The BBC’s arts and entertainment correspondent Ian Youngs also described seating sections that still aren’t ready, hand dryers that aren’t working, and said the arena’s main concourse was already busy with nearly 20,000 people below full capacity. 

Bottom line: It’s pretty humiliating for Co-op Live and its backers that their uber-hyped new venue, the biggest indoor arena in the UK, slated to host some of the biggest acts in the world, wasn’t ready for opening night. The question now will be how many more shows will need to be rescheduled, as the work begins to get it ready for shows for this weekend.

Your Mill briefing

🏛️ The Rochdale Lib Dems suspended one of their candidates over the weekend after she was featured in a video with George Galloway, in which the divisive local MP endorsed her as part of his “grand alliance” (Mills Passim), focussed on getting Labour out of the town hall. When we had an interview with Galloway recently — one he described as “tortuous” — he told us: “I never said, and we [the Workers Party of Britain] have never said, that we are in alliance with the Lib Dems. We hate the Lib Dems, viscerally.” In the video released on Saturday, backdropped by yellow rosette-wearing Lib Dems, Galloway says of Spotland candidate Rabina Asghar “you might be surprised to see me supporting a Liberal Democrat candidate,” but goes on to say “I have no hesitation at all of asking anyone who supports me, everyone who supports me, who lives in Spotland, to vote for Rabina.”

👮 Police have returned to the site in Salford where a dismembered torso was recently found. GMP completed a two week search of the area last week, but have returned “as a result of enquiries that have developed”, says a spokesperson. The torso is thought to have belonged to a man in his 40s whose identity is yet to be revealed. 

📹 The Guardian have reported on the worrying practice of women in Manchester city centre being voyeuristically filmed on nights out. The paper spoke to two women who were filmed without their consent last April. “We had no idea they were filming. We just kept thinking: ‘How didn’t we see them?’” Go deeper and read Mollie’s piece searching for the people behind the camera from earlier this year: They didn't realise they were being filmed, but 14 million were watching.

⛺️ The MEN has spoken to some of the five remaining rough sleepers staying at the homeless encampment on St Peter’s Square. One 29-year-old, who asks not to be named, says they struggle to navigate the temporary accommodation system and feel more comfortable living in the encampment, where they have access to hot food from local charities. Go deeper, and read our piece from inside the encampment before it was fenced off and (mostly) cleared out: Manchester's new homeless camp has good intentions. Is that enough?

🖊️ Finally: the urban sketcher Len Grant (who we interviewed back in 2020) is raising money to get his latest work, Bars and Barbers: Sketches from the Northern Quarter, printed. Supporters will get a copy of the book when it comes out in Autumn. Donate here.

Home of the week

This three bedroom barn conversion dates back to the 1600s and is set back from a quiet cobbled street in Bolton. £425,000.

Our favourite reads

‘It’s open to everyone’: women’s football watch parties are on the rise — The Guardian

After tiring of attempting to find pubs that televise women’s football matches, people have started to take matters in their own hands. In Manchester, Rain on Me, a football club aimed at women, non-binary and trans people, has hosted screenings in the Carlton Club in Whalley Range; in London, a similar football club has organised large-scale screenings with karaoke, DJs and games.

The Star & Garter — Dave Haslam

In honour of Andy Martin, who operated the Star and Garter since 1997 and sadly passed away this year, Dave Haslam has republished a story about a classic night at an indie disco in the Star and Garter. Devoted Smiths fans turned up in their droves to sing Hang the DJ and pints were £1.30 (which would make you think it was in the 1830s, but it was actually in 2000).

Do Friend-Finding Platforms Actually Work? — Vice

For those who struggle to make friends organically, apps like Bumble BFF and meet-up groups like The Manchester Lonely Girls Club can attempt to beat social isolation by pairing you with like-minded strangers. Many have lauded the success of such groups, but whether you’re making a friend in real life or via an app, the strategy remains the same: “Putting embarrassment and nervousness to one side, and trying to connect.”

Our to do list

Tuesday

🧵 Salford Museum and Art Gallery is showing an exhibition of large, abstract wall hangings inspired by the former mills of Manchester and Salford. It’s free.

🎨 To celebrate their 40th birthday, Castlefield Gallery are showing an exhibition that recreates the kind of bold, surreal paintings they were showing in their first ever year of opening.

Wednesday

📚 Track Record: Me, Music and the War on Blackness, a new memoir by George the Poet, explores how power dynamics and environment shape the people we become. Head to Manchester Central Library to hear George in conversation with author Okechukwu Nzelu and pick up a copy of the book. £8.

🎹 Japanese electronic composer Ryoji Ikeda is performing an immersive live set at Band on the Wall. £25.

Thursday 

🎞️ It’s the final week of ¡Viva! Festival, HOME’s annual celebration of the best of Spanish-language cinema. This Thursday, they’re showing Secaderos, a coming-of-age film about the lives of two girls growing up in rural Andalusia. Book here.

🍷 Flawd’s monthly jazz night returns, with performances from guitarists Asaph Tal and Bim Williams from 5pm until late.