Last Updated on April 7, 2024, 10:03 AM | Published: April 7, 2024
OKLAHOMA CITY — Development is booming right now across OKC, with sprawling multi-use complexes, park projects, endless new offices, and of course plans for an ambitious (and potentially irrational) record-breaking skyscraper.
But one area of the market seemingly driving a large portion of the city’s massive-scale building development is the live music industry, with no fewer than five major, multi-million dollar projects in OKC aimed (at least in part) at the high-level concert tour market.
The still-controversial new arena, the multipurpose stadium still looking for a location, and the new OG&E-sponsored Fairgrounds coliseum all cited the possibility of large-scale concerts and blockbuster tours as a reason for their necessity in the city.
The huge new Sunset Amphitheater set for OKC’s western reaches and the recently overhauled Zoo Amphitheatre are both targeted entirely at multi-thousand-person musical events.
But as the touring industry continues to see complications in everything from rising fuel and travel costs to dwindling performer pay and untenable ticket fees – leading to acts like The Strokes, Animal Collective, and Santigold all canceling dates or complete tours – how viable is this tactic for these OKC developments?
It’s not all Taylor Swift out there.
Business Insider, The Guardian, and Medium have all published reports in just the past year examining the increasing non-sustainability of the concert tour industry, with even global superstar Lorde decrying touring as “a demented struggle” in the modern world.
Not to mention that the city’s new and revamped outdoor venues will be competing with global warming and the regularly brutal heat waves beating down on OKC during what would be their peak months.
So let’s take a look at these various venues and how likely they’ll actually be to bring in the big names and expand Oklahoma City’s mark on the tour stop map.
Planned new arena – capacity: 18,000+
Perhaps the most controversial OKC development proposal in decades, the planned new Downtown arena is primarily intended as a home for Thunder basketball, but proponents of the project openly touted the potential for bigger concert tours in their push to secure the nearly $1 billion in needed public funds.
The city’s current arena, the Paycom Center, has recently seen some significant concert success, with Drake selling out back-to-back nights just last month and 2022 setting a new record for the venue with more than 30 music or comedy events in one year.
But that hasn’t been an upward trend. The previous record of 29 music or comedy events in one year was set all the way back in 2013.
Moreover, current plans for the new arena don’t show any measurable increase in the number of seats, matching the roughly 18,000 ticketable seats currently available at the Paycom Center, still well below the 19,000 seats at Tulsa’s BOK Center and 20,000 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
It’s difficult to see how a new arena with no increased seating capacity will bring in larger tours than what the existing arena is seeing.
And anyone hoping that a new state-of-the-art arena could bring Taylor Swift to OKC should note that she passed up all of those regional venues in favor of Dallas’s AT&T Stadium, which seats a staggering 80,000. No current or planned venue in OKC can hold that many concertgoers.
MAPS 4 multipurpose stadium – capacity: 10,000
Another largely publicly funded project, the long-planned multipurpose stadium will likewise be a long-term home for the OKC Energy soccer team, but again, the project’s champions cited the possibility of large-scale concerts in their push for funding.
Originally planned for 8,000 seats, city and project leaders recently secured further funding to increase the planned capacity to 10,000, allowing the stadium to fill a gap in the city’s market between the 7,000-seat Zoo Amphitheater and the Paycom Center.
However – as far as concert tours are concerned – most musical acts use an “end stage” design that places a stage at one end and blocks out all the seats behind, meaning that the actual, useable capacity in a concert scenario might be competing directly with the Zoo Amp.
Are there enough tours to justify two competing 7000+ capacity outdoor venues in the city? We’ll see.
Sunset amphitheater – capacity: 12,500
Yet another venue project seeing rapidly growing controversy, the upcoming Sunset Amphitheater in the Mustang Creek Crossing development (off the Kilpatrick Turnpike near SW 15th and Sara Rd.) is making residents of the nearby neighborhoods uneasy.
Another outdoor venue aiming to compete directly with the longstanding Zoo Amp, the Sunset Amphitheater is slated to be one of many near-identical venues across the country from Colorado-based concert promoters Notes Live, and is planned to seat more than 12,000.
Unlike some of these other projects, however, the Sunset is entirely privately funded to the tune of more than $90 million, a total that Notes Live hopes to recoup through sales of “ownership” of private firepit seating areas that can run up to $650,000 each.
Of course, the logistics and decibel levels required for that many concertgoers are likely to worry the surrounding residential neighbors, who are expected to turn out to voice their concerns this coming Tuesday when City Council considers the required rezoning for the amphitheater.
A Facebook group for opponents of the project already has more than 750 members.
Additionally, organizers behind the Sunset Amphitheater won’t only be potentially competing for tours with the Zoo and the new stadium. They’ll also be competing with themselves, as Notes Live is already planning another Sunset Amphitheater in Broken Arrow.
OG&E Coliseum at the Fairgrounds – capacity: 7,500
Another major MAPS project that saw the word “concerts” thrown around in its proposal, the new fairgrounds coliseum is nearing completion, with OG&E securing naming rights for a still undisclosed amount.
This $140+ million development could potentially put OKC’s fairgrounds on somewhat similar footing to the Dallas Fair Park area, whose 20,000-seat pavilion has been a major concert tour destination for decades.
However, like the new arena and the new stadium, the OG&E Coliseum won’t be relying entirely on concerts. Just like the old Jim Norick Arena that it’ll be replacing, its primary focus is likely to be the horse shows and State Fair events that OKC crowds love.
But with a similar seating capacity to that stadium and the Zoo Amphitheater, but with the benefit of being indoors and cooled, the new coliseum could begin to look like a better alternative to both organizers and crowds as the summers continue to heat up.
The Zoo Amphitheatre – capacity: 7,000
The longest-standing and most beloved major outdoor music venue in OKC, the Zoo Amphitheatre is soon set to reopen after some operational hand-changes and major renovations, with fans and audiences waiting to hear show announcements for the summer concert season.
The OKC Zoo recently parted ways with its longtime events and hospitality contractors and began accepting bids for new groups to manage everything from food service to the legendary Zoo Amp.
The winning offer for the amphitheatre’s operations came from SaveLive, the same music venue consolidation conglomerate that’s already courted controversy in OKC after assuming functional control of The Criterion, Tower Theatre, and Beer City Music Hall following those venues’ financial worries through 2022.
Since then, the venues have seen layoffs, major management shakeups, and a regular stream of guaranteed moneymaking events like dance parties and tribute shows outpacing the number of original artists and tours.
That said, SaveLive does have the advantage over seemingly all the other large-scale venue promoters in OKC in terms of connections and touring networks guaranteed to pull in big names. Their control of the Zoo Amp stands to seriously increase the profile of the venue and the caliber of acts gracing the stage in coming years.
Both the MAPS 4 stadium and the Sunset Amphitheater will likely be wrestling with SaveLive over acts and tours coming through OKC.
Or the Zoo Amp could instead become a huge outdoor dance party venue.
Either way, they’ll be competing with rising temperatures and the increasingly dangerous summer heat.
When Incubus took the stage at the Zoo Amphitheatre in August of 2023 as one of the last concerts before the venue’s shuttering for renovation, fans reported temperatures over 90 degrees until well after dark.
With that heating trend continuing and summer temperatures only set to get more brutal in coming years, time will tell if sun-soaked outdoor concert destinations like the Zoo Amp and the new Sunset can remain viable, or even safe.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
