The home of the BC Lions Canadian Football League team and the Vancouver Whitecaps Major League Soccer franchise opened its doors on Friday following a C$563 million (US$536 million) revamp. The most noticeable enhancement at the 54,000-seat stadium is one of the largest cable-supported retractable roofs in the world. Other improvements have seen huge television screens installed along with wider seats and special screens that will reduce the seating capacity for Whitecaps games.
The stadium’s general manager, Howard Crosley, believes the new roof will help BC Place to attract more non-sporting events. “The promoters didn’t want to bring those events into the building because it was hot and stuffy in the summertime, those types of things,” Crosley told CBC. “So now we can open it up and be like an amphitheatre in downtown Vancouver...and we already have interest from a lot of concert promoters that there will be quite a few more concert events in the building.”
Stadium officials have claimed that the renovation will increase revenues by around C$40 million (US$38 million) per year. A title sponsor for BC Place is also expected to be unveiled in the near future. The Lions marked the reopening of the stadium with a 33-24 victory over the Edmonton Eskimos before more than 50,000 spectators on Friday, and although there were complaints from fans about long queues for food and beverage kiosks, Crosley insisted that the issues were no more than teething problems.
Crosley told CTV: “Two thirds of our staff are new and about 20% of the new staff that were called into work did not show. We've addressed the service issues and are confident that we will have a better show.”
