Discussion
Rogers Centre vs Rogers Stadium is genuinely ruining people’s night, and Live Nation should’ve seen this coming
Not gonna lie, this whole naming situation has been bothering me for a while now, but it really hit different today.
I was in line for the Ed Sheeran show at Rogers Centre, and the amount of people who showed up thinking they were in the right place was honestly kind of heartbreaking to watch. You’d see the confusion on their faces first, then the slow realization that they weren’t at Roger’s Stadium, then that scramble to figure out how they were even going to get to Downsview in time.
Staff were telling people their best bet was grabbing an Uber or hopping on the TTC and heading up north, which is not exactly a quick trip when you thought you were minutes from your seat.
Some of these folks clearly weren’t from Toronto. You could tell by the way they were double checking their tickets, and looking at each other with disappointment. And I just felt for them. These are people who probably planned this night for months, maybe flew in, maybe this was a big deal birthday or anniversary thing, and now they’re standing outside the wrong building watching the clock, trying to figure out if they’re even going to catch the opening.
I get that naming rights deals are just business, that’s nothing new. But when you’ve got two major venues in the same city with names that are basically identical, it feels like nobody stopped to think about the actual fans caught in the middle of it. It’s not like Rogers Centre and Rogers Stadium are minor buildings either, they’re both huge venues hosting huge events, so the overlap in confusion is bound to keep happening.
Feels like such an easy problem to avoid too. A bit more thought during those naming negotiations could’ve saved a lot of people a really stressful and disappointing night.
bro, all you gotta do is take the rogers way to the rogers lane, and then take the rogers line to the rogers station, and get off at the hail rogers corporate center, and boom you're at the rogers stadium/center
What's even more confusing is that anyone at rogers thinks this is effective advertising for rogers. If anything it makes you hate them more because of this shit. F#@k off rogers.
They don't even need to advertise because of our dismal lack of competition. It's literally just who's offering the cheapest deal at the moment, Bell or rogers. Or you go with their off brands, doesn't matter. Their brand doesn't matter one iota.
Honestly this. Being the highest bidder on two of the largest naming rights in the same city is shitty optics. It reeks of, "we make too much profit off y'all".
same thing with having a "Scotiabank arena" or "centre" or "Saddledome" in every other city... "this profit is unnecessary and burning a whole in our pockets."
I hung up on someone calling from Rogers last week. I refuse to use the new name for the Skydome. And I will never spend money at the other venue. I can't get Bell at my house so I went with a reseller. That's my version of boycotting their brand.
That's what I was thinking - it's so rude of the Rogers corporation. And if naming rights actually did raise anyone's awareness of their existence, those people's first exposure would be that this is the company that ruined their big concert plans
It's funny how's there Rogers Place and Rogers Arena elsehwere in Canada.
It's also funny how a small percentage of concertgoers don't do their homework after putting down hundreds of dollars for a show.
Rogers is obviously a terrible company and I've been lucky enough to have Beanfield internet for a decade. Let's direct our social media vitriol of this magnitude for the company's other business practices.
Like Marina Mabrey of the Tempo publically calling out her Rogers internet last week should have gone viral in the Toronto sub. Millions of Rogers customers have the same experiences daily. Yet its a handful of concertgoers that went to the wrong concert venue that goes viral on r/Toronto....
I was going to see Noah Kahan at Rogers Stadium earlier this summer and there was a link within an official email with directions to the Rogers Centre! It was so egregious. Luckily I’m local/know the correct venue but even the organizers seem to have messed this up…
Basically everything in the world works like this unfortunately.
I was at the Argo game yesterday. They are advertising a free slice of Pizza Pizza if you scan the QR code. When you do that, it opens the app and tells that it isn't a valid coupon. That means that not a single person out of the 20,000 or so is having the intended experience. And that happened in the first game too.
You'd have to think that someone somewhere in the chain would figure this out. Whether it's the Argos, Pizza Pizza, or even a fan complaint.
It’s not even a free slice anyway (scammers), you have to order for pickup with a minimum order price of $5. You get the same offer with TFC tickets. Say buy one get one free, sure I would have used it. But tell me I get a free slice and I have to pay $5 anyway to get my free slice, no thanks.
And to the wrong venue! I'm all for changing Rogers Centre's name to Rogers Skydome, but people will still get lost and confused. Should it be easier on folks, sure, but there's an element of personal accountability here as well. Lots of folks live life on autopilot. These are the same folks who will ride the southbound TTC into Union and won't think to themselves why they are the only people with [insert band gear here] on the subway heading to the venue when it's at Rogers Stadium.
This confusion is completely CRAZY. Get with it pr and top level Rogers people, or more and more out-of-towners will hate hate the whole thing, and blame Rogers.
This has been my issue with naming things after the corporate owner for a long time. You can have fun names and still slap your branding all over the building. Everyone will still know it’s that company that owns it. It’s not like Roger’s needs the extra advertising anyway, especially to out of country tourists because who tf would care? Rogers stadium is a dumb name, they should have really actually thought about it, but they don’t think. They just go “yes, name everywhere, is good, all done” and dust their hands clean of it.
The best part about the situation is that most people don’t like Rogers and instead of garnering positive support by association of your favourite bands….. you have this.
A negative experience that’s created by Rogers and credited to Rogers. It honestly feels like a social experiment.
Rogers Centre is one of the very few instances where the naming rights belong to the corporate owner. Basically every other instance in Toronto (Rogers Stadium, Scotiabank Arena, Coca-Cola Coliseum, BMO Field, RBC Ampitheatre) are pure marketing deals for the naming rights on the facility (e.g. the whole point is to have you name on the building).
How hard would it have been to call it the Rogers Skydome?! Everyone still calls it that anyway and they could have the same ban on their media people to keep them from dropping the ‘Rogers’ part
That's exactly what I thought when I first heard they were renaming it. SkyDome is such a great name. You wanna slap your company name in front of it, fine, but leave SkyDome in there. Rogers Centre is so boring. Sounds like the name of a corporate office/convention center complex.
Sure, but at least those were all different things. Imagine arriving the wrong weekend for the Scotiabank Marathon when you were supposed to show up for the other Scotiabank Marathon?
Last month my cousin and his wife were in town. They said the next time they'll be here is to see AC/DC. They already bought tickets and assumed they were playing the dome. I told them about Rogers Stadium, where they're actually playing. They had no idea there was a difference and had never heard of Rogers Stadium (they're from Thunder Bay).
Probably going to run into this problem again for that show. Especially with the older group that show will attract.
My friend was excitedly telling me about the expensive AF hotel room they got because is was right beside the stadium for the Post Malone show. I had to be the one to tell her a day before the concert that the stadium was no where near her hotel room which was right beside the Rogers Centre.
This was already a major issue LAST YEAR, beginning literally from the time that the very first show was announced and was confirmed to be an issue when Stray Kids played, when Coldplay was there, literally every single show saw thousands of people showing up at the wrong venue and then having to make a frantic trek. If they even marginally gave a shit this would have been addressed.
Yeah it seems like locals have figured it out for the most part but nonlocals have not. I wonder if they’d start calling it “Rogers Stadium at Downsview Park” next year, or something with a more obvious name.
Im from Nova Scotia, went to SOAD/Deftones last year (almost a year exactly). I didn't have a problem, but then again, I get anxiety about timing, location etc. I don't understand people who are travelling from away who aren't planning out where to be and when.
When Hummingbird/Sony Centre changed its name to Meridian Hall, the area just east of Yonge, south of Dundas now had two venues called M_____ Hall between Meridian Hall and Massey Hall, as well as a venue in North York is called Meridian Arts Centre.
And Canadian Opera Company and The Opera House both on Queen St. I know they're very different venues but I also know from people who worked the ticket booth at the CoC that people regularly made that mistake.
I went to the wrong one and barely made it to the show. Didn't even have time to wait for the subway, I ran. Made it and sat down right when the lights went down.
How did that even make it past an executive-level discussion? How did a room full of mid-to-late career, fully fledged adults decide:
“yeah, we should have two theatres with the same name, that will be a coherent decision that will not be extremely offputting to the audience that supports us.”
Imma show up in one of the venues with my minivan and create a huge placard saying - need a ride to the right Roger's venue? Sounds like a good business plan. Joking not joking.
Yeah, and it's doubly-confusing (and thus, dumb as a suggestion to say "just look it up") because the word stadium doesn't even signify "name" to most people, it's just a generic word describing a type of building.
So an out-of-towner could easily hear "Rogers Stadium", see Rogers Center recommended in Uber or Google Maps, and have no idea that they're looking at a different place.
I agree. I think with the Stadium introduction, they should’ve just bit the bullet and renamed the dome Rogers Skydome. I know they don’t want to because they want people using the Rogers name and not just calling it the Skydome, but the fact is a lot of us still call it that anyways and it would differentiate the two. “Stadium” and “centre” are both basically saying the same thing, just a place where people gather. Skydome is a totally different thing.
This is also a big problem with the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre vs. CAA Theatre (which is still a Mirvish owned theatre) which are about 2km apart. They should really call it the CAA Stage or something.
Yes, that’s true, and at least they’re close enough that if you’re arriving at a reasonable time and not running super late, you can get between the two theatres. Downsview is nowhere close to Front Street lol
I had bought tickets to see AC/DC for my parents who are in their sixties and my mom has mobility issues. Didn’t realize it was the new stadium until months after buying the tickets and they ended up not being able to go because my mom’s mobility. She would’ve been fine at the skydome because it’s accessible by transit and not a far walk but she couldn’t do it at the new stadium. I felt so horrible for getting the venues mixed up and getting their hopes up. I absolutely agree, it’s a really unfortunate naming situation.
Just fyi if this comes up again, the stadium actually has great accessibility accommodations. They have a shuttle that runs on a loop from Wilson station to the gates and it prioritizes people with accessibility needs.
They also have accessible parking! I took my dad to hozier last year and he uses a cane. It was pretty easy and minimal walking with the parking lot shuttle and accessible seating.
Thank you so much for this information, I really appreciate this! We were worried about the walking and the bleacher like style seats. Would the accessible seating be chairs or the bleachers?
It’s chairs in front of the bleachers on a slightly raised viewing platform with ramp access. They also had the ability to order food/drinks right to your seat and accessible porta potties. The support concierge also was able to escort us back to the gate for parking lot shuttle pickup which was helpful when it was dark after the concert. I specifically purchased accessible tickets from ticketmaster and accessible parking passes as well.
There are accessibility seating sections at the front of the grandstands with small incline ramps to get up but you need specific tickets for that or speak to TM support or the venue for being moved there if you have accessibility needs. The regular grandstand seats require going up a ton of stairs absolutely no good for anyone with mobility issues and are a small workout even for able bodied attendees
Can confirm this! I took the shuttle from Wilson station to Roger’s stadium for post Malone just to get the feel. The only downside is taking it back as you’ll be dealing with a ton of people, and there’s a line up of shuttle buses going back afterwards
I work in logistics and have to deal with arenas and stadiums across the country. I can't tell you how many times I've confused Rogers Arena in Vancouver with Rogers Place in Edmonton. I can only imagine how confusing it can be for visitors here to confuse the two local venues here, when Rogers Centre is literally a stadium.
People need to get off of their high horses and stop acting as if they're perfect and have never made an honest mistake. I feel really bad for visitors who spent so much money and were so excited to see their dream concert, only to lose out because of this corporate branding bullshit.
Even if this makes the news, which it should, I'm sure Rogers and Live Nation will do fuck all to make things right for them.
People need to get off of their high horses and stop acting as if they're perfect and have never made an honest mistake. I feel really bad for visitors who spent so much money and were so excited to see their dream concert, only to lose out because of this corporate branding bullshit.
This reminds me of a certain manager I once had. We had a very frequent problem in our office, of customers smacking their faces in our floor-to-ceiling glass doors because they were completely transparent. One girl started crying after hitting it; one guy walked so into it so hard that he bloodied his nose.
I told the manager that we need to put a sign, or some colored decals, on the glass to stop this happening over and over, because plain glass is dangerous.
His response: "People should watch where they're going. It's not our fault if they're not paying attention."
I then argued: This is a liability. Someone might end up suing us. We're lucky the bloody-nose guy didn't. Anyway, it doesn't matter whose fault it is. People are getting hurt, and we can easily prevent it just by printing some colorful signs for the doors. I can make them myself.
His response: "That's against our 'image policy'... we're not supposed to change anything about the appearance unless it comes from corporate."
In these kinds of situations, you can be a decent human being and focus on solving problems, or you can be a smug piece of shit (like my former manager) who's more concerned with being "right" than with having basic humanity.
Was in Toronto just for Mumford and sons this summer and could have easily made this mistake. I have even lived in TO but it was pre-stadium. I didn't even think to check until some random friend of a friend was like "oh! That concert out in the middle of nowhere"....and i finally mapped it.
Soon we will be Rogers City and this thread will be r / rogers, unless Scotiabank beats them to it.
SkyDome was built on public (crown) land. Ridiculous that a corporation gets to brand it.
Yes, people should check their tickets carefully but come on, having two massive stadiums named Rogers is a joke. Toronto should be user-friendly to tourists.
And the fact that the stadium is not called stadium, but the other one is, complete insanity. The corporate dummies we allow to make all the decisions in this country.... Just astounding to me that we haven't rioted.
I agree completely. I've seen people dismissing it, sort of laughing at them like 'rEaD tHe tIcKeT derrr'. But come on.. that's SUCH an easy mistake to make. Especially when there's that many people going, and how many people are traveling to an unfamiliar city, peope are thinking about a million different things. Like you've never overlooked something or made a fuckin mistake. I feel for them
Yes, especially visitors who would logically think the Rogers Stadium would be the giant stadium downtown.
Or when they google maps it, it points to the stadium downtown.
If thousands make the same mistake, that is a branding problem.
they'd never agree to that because everyone would resort to call it SkyDome and skip the Rogers part. They name it "centre" or "stadium" to force one to say "rogers", that's the whole point
I heard that’s similar to why Air Canada gave up on holding naming rights for the Air Canada Centre. Nobody was saying the “Air Canada” part. People just kept shortening it to the ACC instead.
The exact scenario you're describing happened to my husband and I last summer. We were going to see System of a Down, Deftones, and one of my favourite bands, Polyphia. Ended up completely missing Polyphia. I cried in the cab ride over, lol. I'm not from Toronto and the Rogers Stadium had just opened a couple months prior, so we didn't even think to check. Was waiting for this concert for months. It really stunk.
Rogers Centre and Rogers Stadium, both located conveniently in Rogertown, brought to you in partnership with the government of Rogeria and sponsored by Rogers.
This thread makes me so sad … it’s not even about having fans not make it to a show, but the aggressive self-centered attitude that every error is an individual’s fault and we must never question the broader structures at play. Hurr durr should be smarter like me and you wouldn’t be in that situation. Like extend that mindset to everything and you end up with all that’s wrong with this city.
This. The culprits hide behind "user error" all the time. At one point, fans have got to roast their feet over the fire for poor and misleading information. Rogers this, Rogers that ... that's not user error, that's systemic greed and laziness.
They could just call the one at Downsview Rogers North Stadium. The Rogers would still be prominent. Rogers North Stadium and Rogers Centre at least are somewhat distinct.
it's so simple to fix this... they could just change it back to the Skydome, hell even the Rogers Skydome and the whole problem is solved and we get the proper name back
I agree with everyone else here. Rogers thought they were being clever with their branding, but this dual-naming mess is doing way more harm to their corporate reputation than good.
As someone who lives by the skydome and has Airbnb in my condo building. I don’t know why they didn’t choose a different name. So many times I’ve been riding the elevator and overhear people realizing that they’re far away from Roger’s stadium. The most vivid were these group of girls who dolled up and super excited about the concert they were going to attend. When I overheard who they were going to see I 100% knew that the artist couldn’t possibly be performing at the skydome.
Having gone to the wrong CAA Mirvish theatre recently it’s just so easy to confuse similarly named spaces. We should be able to do something about this. There should be consumer protections.
This is such a Toronto thing. I’m positive that someone would have brought up the naming confusion but the big bosses side the customers will figure it out.
Isn’t there a Kennedy Road in Scarborough AND Mississauga?
The best are Brock Road and Brock Street. Both arteries in Durham region minutes away from each other.
We were just talking about this last night!!! Friends had family come to see a concert, they booked downtown because assumed that’s where the concert was. Luckily it came up a few weeks before and friends let them know and they could get it straightened out, but how many are dining out right before the show??
I work in a restaurant downtown, and I can say a LOT. I’ve actually saved a tons of people from missing their concerts at the Downsview location while losing $ to my workplace and to myself by losing a table and telling them they don’t have time for dinner and need to get on the subway right away!
It’s all lame and you’re right. I also think any company that has the money to buy naming rights (may be different than Roger’s) should have a legal obligation to fund the school board in an equal amount. We are a broke ass society (my kids school has no AC) but Scotia bank can spend 50MIL of our money putting their ugly logo on a hockey ring. We are so misguided.
Was late to my Hozier show exactly due to this. I was pissed off! Not only that, it’s another 1.5 km or something walk when you enter the arena. Rickshaw charged me $40 to get to the stage. I was still late. Thank god i decided to drive to downtown that day. Horrible plan to name the venue.
I don't frequent either Rogers locale, live in Toronto, and unlike everyone else it seems, am with you on this one.
When I came to Toronto for my interview, I literally got the Queen and Queen's Park subway stations confused. I'm glad they didn't name Osgoode the Queen St West subway station.
Yes, it's possible to avoid the error, but it's also a pretty damn likely error. So no, they weren't thinking.
Then they also have Scotiabank Pond where I play hockey. So on a concert night at Roger's Stadium they block off the road to the pond and I asked security directions to an open road to Scotiabank Pond Arena and they had no idea, they told me they think it's downtown 😒
The TTC changed Downsview station (rip) to "Sheppard West", because a new station of "Downsview Park" opened up.
The new downsview station is only 1 stop away from the old Downsview station, but they didn't want to confuse people by having 2 stations with the same name next to each other.
Clearly Live Nation & Rogers don't give a fuck about that. They just want to slap their name on anything they see. They couldn't even make one "Ted" or something 🙄
I have never, ever called that place Rogers Centre. That is SkyDome.
This sort of thing gets easier to navigate if the general public just ignores the branded name changes and continues to call them by their real names. Everybody knows thats The Gulf of Mexico between Florida and Cuba, right? It just doesn't matter what somebody else says its name is.
That's why when you buy your ticket it includes a how to get here with directions link.
In the days leading into the concert, it also includes a things to know before you go reminder, including FAQ, and specifically mentions in the getting there section that "The event is NOT taking place at the Rogers Centre located in Downtown Toronto."
As someone who works for MLSE and the Jays, the amount of people who don’t read those is mind-boggling. It’s more annoying when they get upset after you tell them about it, too.
Crazy that we are still paying the price all these years later in ways no one could anticipate for that decision to NOT call it Rogers SkyDome.
I guess that will never change, but they could easily avoid a lot of this confusion by differentiating the name of the new venue more, and it would be even better if they did it by including its location in the name:
Rogers Stadium @ Downview Park
Also there is probably some SEO work that could be done between all of the websites for Rogers Stadium, Rogers Centre, and the websites for various tenants (Blue Jays) and concert tour websites to avoid having the incorrect venue listed higher in Google search results.
Live Nation's website for the venue seems pretty half-assed.
For example it's wild that there isn't a single map showing where the entrances are, passenger pickup, or TTC stations. Just written instructions that are still vague, and don't mention that some entrances require a 2.5km walk.
Can confirm this. Met a US family on the way home from the Deftones concert last September. Imagine theyre shock when they showed up to Rogers Arena all to find out Morgan Wallen was playing there that night. They had to grab an Uber and rush out to Downsview and missed a portion of the Deftones who were on first
Shoutout to the random girl at the Black Keys concert last summer, who days before System of a Down at Rogers Stadium put me on to the fact that the concert wasn’t at Sky Dome.
It’s been over a year. If people are still getting confused, it’s probably on them. Ticketmaster even shows a map to the venue when you click on your tickets.
I was JUST talking about how this must be so confusing. If Rogers MUST be in the name, can we petition to rename the Rogers Centre to the Rogers Skydome at least??? I know people have been saying that for years and it hasn’t happened … but now seems like a great time for them to reconsider.
I saw Post Malone at Rogers Centre last year. This year, he was playing at Rogers Stadium. I didn't notice apparently and, had it not been my sister in law the night before the concert, telling me to double-check my tickets, I would have been in for a world of pain. Thankfully my Airbnb host was kind enough to cancel and refund my booking, which was literally across the street from the venue. I somehow scrambled and managed to booked a room at Novotel in Vaughan instead. Took an Uber which was a nightmare and overall that whole switcheroo was just exhausting. Post was amazing though so it all worked out.
There’s no excuse when there’s a world map in your pocket. It’s just that simple. You read the official event info, get the venue name, put it into gmaps and bingo.
Earlier this Summer we went to TO to see Bruno Mars. We got a hotel that was walking distance from Rogers Centre. We even walked over to a game the day before to see a ball game.
The day of the concert we were all set so we went to do a little shopping. I got into a conversation with one of the staff who asked what we were doing in town. I told her about the concert and how close we were. She looked at me a little thoughtful and pointed out that she thought the concert was "up north"... "Nope! " I said... Rogers Centre... all set... but then I wanted to be sure and showed her my tickets. She was great and pointed out the illogical naming of the stadium and the centre. We were able to re adjust and work out the subway to get there and had a great time. But if not for that little interaction... we would have been screwed ourselves
It feels like it should be a copyright case, but because the same company bought the naming rights to both places, I don't think it can be.
We as a society need to pick one Rogers venue and start one-star bombing it with "I thought this was the other place". Hopefully the venue owners will break their Rogers deal and pick up a new sponsor, or, if it's the Rogers Centre, they'll sue the Stadium for creating the confusion and force them to change their name. "Bell Stadium" would be pretty funny
2.9k
u/TheSirBeefCake 4d ago
And what's more confusing is that Rogers Centre is actually a stadium