“It only took a few weeks to construct it, so it wouldn't be hard to take it down and put it up again”: For hire: one stadium. Good price. One lady owner
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The venue for Adele’s run of gigs in Munich this summer looks set to be the world’s first portable stadium.
The Tottenham-born singer will be play her final show in the German city this Saturday. For the residency a 74,000 capacity arena was constructed, including a 13,000 seater ‘Adele World’ food hall, with an English-style pub and separate stage for covers bands. But after the weekend it will be all taken down, packed away and stored until the next time a similar-sized artist needs a bespoke stadium venue.
An insider has told The Sun newspaper's Bizarre column: "It would have been a catastrophic loss of money for an entire stadium to be built only for these ten Adele shows, even though the tickets aren't cheap. But a load of different superstars, such as Beyonce or Taylor Swift, could use the venue in years to come.”
"Obviously it's been built around Adele, so the dream would be for her to use it in other places, but she is eager to have a break. It only took a few weeks to construct it, so it wouldn't be hard to take it down and put it up again in an entirely different city.”
"There is scope to do more impressive staging when it is one place, rather than kit being moved in and out of stadiums in different cities each night."
Pop up venues are increasingly a thing in the events industry. One of the stadiums used for the Qatar World Cup was one: Stadium 974 used, ahem 974 shipping containers as part of its construction and has since been disassembled. In New York there was a 34,000 capacity portable venue for the recent T20 Cricket World Cup which will soon to taken down, and of course there is the Abba Arena, which continues to host the Abba Voyage concerts in the Olympic Park.
None of these have yet been reused, so it will be interesting to see if Adele’s pop up venue does eventually pop up again somewhere else in the world.
As for Adele herself, the record-breaking singer returns to Las Vegas in September to complete her series of residency gigs. After that he has nothing else in her diary. In an interview with German broadcaster ZDF last month she said: “My tank is quite empty from being on stage every weekend in Las Vegas. I don’t have any plans for new music, at all. I want a big break after this and I think I want to do other creative things just for a little while.”
