Montreal's live music venue infrastructure is broken at both ends

When Taylor Swift announced her Eras Tour would hit Toronto for six nights but skip Montreal entirely, the explanation was brutally simple: our Olympic Stadium has 20,000 tears in its roof. Quebec Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx estimated we lost $350 million in economic activity from those shows alone. But the Swift snub revealed something bigger than one crumbling venue—Montreal is failing artists at both ends of the infrastructure spectrum.

We can't house superstars because our stadium is literally falling apart, and we're missing the mid-sized venues that most touring acts actually need. This isn't about corporate conspiracies or cultural decline—it's about basic infrastructure that other cities got right while Montreal stood still. Until we fix both problems, we'll keep watching Toronto get the shows we want.

A stadium-sized disaster

Montreal's Olympic Stadium crisis represents a catastrophic failure that eliminates us from consideration for the biggest tours in music. While Toronto offers both Rogers Centre and Rogers Stadium (with capacities of nearly 40,000 and 50,000 respectively), Montreal's comparable venue is unusable due to structural deterioration that goes far beyond roof tears.

This isn't just about Taylor Swift. Major stadium tours increasingly design productions specifically for venue types Montreal can't accommodate. When artists like Coldplay, Beyoncé, or Ed Sheeran plan stadium tours, Montreal simply isn't an option—forcing fans to travel or miss out entirely.

The ripple effects extend beyond individual shows. When a city can't handle the biggest acts, it loses credibility with mid-tier artists too. Booking agents notice which markets can deliver across all venue sizes, and Montreal increasingly can't.

Missing rungs on Montreal's venue ladder

Here's the problem in numbers: Montreal's venue landscape jumps awkwardly from small clubs and DIY venues holding 300-750 people straight to MTELUS at 2,300 capacity. That's a massive gap where venues seating 1,000-2,000 people should exist—exactly the size most mid-tier touring acts need.

Compare that to Toronto's smoother distribution: Danforth Music Hall (1,500), Phoenix Concert Theatre (1,250), and Massey Hall (2,752) provide the stepping stones that allow artists to grow their audience in logical increments. When an artist outgrows Montreal's small venues, their next option is a space that's often too big and too expensive.

This isn't exactly theoretical, either: In a thread that served as inspiration for this piece, multiple Reddit users document traveling to Boston, Toronto, and New York more often than attending concerts in their own city. Burlington, Vermont—a city with 45,000 people—regularly attracts Montreal music fans because Higher Ground offers the kind of capacity venue we're missing (around 1,050 across two rooms).

Venues we've lost along the way

This gap didn't happen overnight. Montreal used to have venues that filled these crucial capacity ranges, but we've systematically lost them to gentrification and poor planning. Le Spectrum, a centrally located venue in the Quartier des Spectacles which held 1,200 people and hosted everyone from Nirvana to Radiohead, was demolished in 2008 for condo development. The building that replaced it? Luxury housing that contributes nothing to the city's cultural infrastructure.

More recently, we've lost La Tulipe, Divan Orange, Katacombes, and others to the same forces: rising rents, noise complaints from new residential neighbours that hold far more sway than they should, and a municipal government that treats live music venues as expendable rather than essential cultural infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Toronto invested in venues at every level. They renovated Massey Hall, supported mid-tier venue development, and maintain multiple stadium options. The result? Toronto was recently named the most popular world tour destination globally, capturing 85.1% of major world tours while Montreal receives only 55.3%.

Each closure makes the gap wider and forces more artists to skip Montreal entirely. When your options are a 500-person club or a 2,300-seat hall, many touring acts simply choose cities with better venue ladders.

It's fixable, and other cities prove it

The good news? Both problems are solvable, and other cities prove it. Boston faced similar mid-tier venue challenges and built Roadrunner, a state-of-the-art 3,500-capacity venue that opened in 2022. The venue features wide, flexible staging that accommodates elaborate productions—exactly what modern touring acts need.

For stadium infrastructure, cities like Nashville invested in Geodis Park and Las Vegas built the Allegiant Stadium, both designed with concert acoustics and sightlines in mind from day one. These venues successfully compete for the biggest touring acts because they were built to modern concert standards. Montreal could achieve similar results with proper investment at both venue levels.

Live music generates $2.8 billion annually in Canada, supporting thousands of jobs in hospitality, transportation, and retail. When major acts skip Montreal, that economic activity goes to Toronto instead.

The venue problems also stifle local talent development. Musicians need different-sized rooms as their careers grow. Without adequate mid-tier venues or functional large venues, Montreal artists either stagnate in small clubs or face impossible leaps to spaces they can't fill—while watching Toronto artists build sustainable careers across a complete venue ecosystem.

Every Taylor Swift show Montreal loses represents not just $350 million in direct economic impact, but proof that our infrastructure can't compete with cities that invested in complete venue systems.

So, what does Montreal need to do?

So, I won't pretend to be an expert on artist bookings, venue development, or municipal construction projects, but signs seem to be pointing in one direction at the least: Emergency action on stadium infrastructure. Whether that means Olympic Stadium renovations designed for concerts or building a new multi-use venue entirely (maybe ROYALMOUNT if its traffic woes can be solved?), Montreal cannot remain competitive without a functional large-scale option. The current situation is unsustainable and—to elder Millenials/Gen Xers/Boomers who remember the good ol' days of concert-going, anyway—embarrassing.

Second, the city must treat mid-tier venue development as essential infrastructure. Zoning laws should protect existing venues and encourage new ones. We need public-private partnerships to develop modern 1,500-3,500 capacity venues with proper acoustics and production capabilities.

Third, and this is basic: Montreal needs "agent of change" policies that protect venues from noise complaints by requiring new residential developments to soundproof themselves rather than forcing existing venues to close. Other cities solved this problem—Montreal can too. The fact that we haven't managed to figure this one out baffles the mind.

It's a choice, not something out of our hands

Montreal can continue watching our cultural relevance diminish as artists route around our broken infrastructure, or we can address the fundamental problems driving them away. We need venues that work at every level—from 1,500-seat halls to 50,000-seat stadiums.

We don't need to accept Taylor Swift playing six Toronto shows while we get none. We don't need to shrug when stadium tours, mid-tier acts, and emerging artists all choose Toronto over Montreal. What we need is leadership that understands venue infrastructure as economic and cultural infrastructure.

Montreal has the population, cultural appetite, and tourism infrastructure to compete—we just need to stop making excuses and start building venues. The venue crisis is a choice, but right now, we're choosing poorly.