Negative stories about Rogers Stadium are ‘branding poison’ for the sponsor, marketers say

As a marketing expert, Markus Giesler was aghast after hearing Coldplay frontman Chris Martin blast Toronto’s brand new Rogers Stadium onstage.
“It sent shivers down my spine,” Giesler said of Martin’s comments at the 50,000-capacity venue built to attract big acts to the city over the next five years.
When he took the stage Monday night, Martin thanked fans for persevering through logistical challenges to get “to this weird stadium in the middle of nowhere,” adding to early complaints from ticketholders about poor crowd control and transit woes to access the location in Toronto’s North York suburb.
Giesler, a professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business, said that’s “the worst case of sponsorships,” for the telecommunication giant, whose name is on the outdoor venue operated by Live Nation on land owned by Northcrest Developments.
“It’s the kind of branding poison that you’re trying to avoid at all costs,” he said.
Experts say that’s the risk that comes with putting your name on a facility you don’t own.
As of Wednesday, Rogers spokesman Zac Carreiro said Live Nation has been improving the venue’s operations and “we know they will continue to make enhancements at the stadium.”
A Live Nation Canada spokesperson said those adjustments include “improving crowd flow, easing traffic congestion, enhancing accessibility and comfort to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for all guests.”
“We’re pleased to see the changes have already had a positive impact,” the Live Nation Canada spokesperson said in an email.

Still, the early impressions could cast a shadow over Rogers’ reputation, Giesler said.

Get daily National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
“When the spotlight is on the venue, the brand’s name shines just as brightly, both in a good and in a bad way. And that has to do with the fact that the fan experience, in some sense, almost directly translates to how we think and how we feel about a brand,” he said.
If the fan experience is great, he said, customers are more likely to have a positive association with the brand attached to it.
For instance, last year Rogers billed itself as the company that brought Taylor Swift to Canada for six sold-out nights in Toronto and three final shows in Vancouver that many fans described as a highlight.
But the inverse is also true, even if Rogers isn’t in charge of the experience.
“I don’t think anyone really knows that Live Nation is operationally in charge. But that’s the kind of assumptions that we have. The place says Rogers, clearly Rogers must be in charge, right? But that’s not the case,” said Giesler.
Claire Tsai, a marketing professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, noted that Rogers’ size means it’s big enough to absorb the negative press, with millions of customers unlikely to change their telecom provider based on a bad concert experience.
“For existing Rogers customers, I think this is probably not going to affect them too much. But for people who are considering switching brands, maybe right now the sentiment is a little on the negative side. They may hesitate.”
However, she doesn’t believe the complaints around the stadium are likely to last.
“The venue will figure out a way to solve these problems,” she said, suspecting some complaints have been blown out of proportion.
One thing that’s less changeable is the venue’s location. It’s on the far outskirts of the city, roughly 15 kilometres north of the downtown core. It could take an hour or more to get there by subway from Union Station, the city’s main transit hub, including a trek that’s more than a kilometre from the nearest subway station.
Again on Tuesday, the Coldplay frontman referenced how remote it was, calling it a “very bizarre stadium a million miles from Earth.”
“We are solely testing the premise ‘if you build it they will come,’” Martin quipped. “I’m very grateful that you did come.”
But the location was a source of confusion for some, who thought they were attending a show at the similarly named Rogers Centre, located downtown.
Brian Ellis, who came to the show from Detroit, was among the concertgoers who booked accommodations next to the Rogers Centre under the mistaken belief he’d be able to walk to the show on Monday.
Instead, he walked a half-hour from the Sheppard West subway station where he parked his car.
On the positive side, with Rogers Stadium, the company is now associated with a purpose-built concert venue that can attract acts such as Coldplay and Oasis, said Michael Naraine, a professor of sport management at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont.
Large musical acts have had to compete with sporting events for time slots at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena and the Rogers Centre, a problem Rogers Stadium was meant to address.
The Rogers Centre — which is both owned and operated by the telecom company — also recently went through renovations that mean seats on the 100 level are no longer pointed toward the centre of the venue. Instead, they’re directed toward home base. It makes sense when the venue is being used for baseball, but not so much when it comes to other uses, he said.
“If you’re … a concert venue where the central act is going to be in the middle, you can’t really have your seats focused off stage right,” Naraine said.
But the Rogers Stadium won’t be a long-term solution to Toronto’s concert crunch, as it’s temporary by design.
Located near the former Downsview Airport, the site has been earmarked for a massive live-work-play development that’s expected to house more than 100,000 people upon its completion in a few decades.
In the meantime, University of Guelph marketing professor Timothy Dewhirst said there may not be much incentive to drastically improve the customer experience for concertgoers, given that Live Nation and Rogers own much of the city’s other medium-to-large concert halls.
“Often if there is that kind of concentration of the market there can be complacency. There isn’t sufficient competition of an alternative,” Dewhirst said. “It often leads to higher prices, and anyone that’s attended a music or sports event in Toronto can probably attest that it’s gotten very expensive.”
If music lovers want to see massive acts such as Oasis — who is performing two nights in August on their only stop in Canada — while avoiding the trek to Downsview, they’ll likely have to travel even farther: to Montreal or Detroit.
“To see them in Toronto, there really is not an alternative other than maybe to decide not to go,” Dewhirst said.


A new poll by Leger has found that Quebec residents are the happiest in Canada.
The web survey of nearly 40,000 Canadians found that Quebecers rated their happiness at an average of 72.4 out of 100, which is well above the national average.
New Brunswick followed Quebec with an average of 70.2, while Manitoba and Prince Edward Island finished at the bottom of the list.
Mississauga, Ont. had the highest happiness rating of the 10 largest cities, while Toronto was lowest.
Montreal finished second in the category.
The survey found that 49 per cent of respondents said their happiness level was unchanged over the past year, while 23 per said they were happier and 28 per cent said they were less happy.
“These results reveal a population that is both resilient and tested, affected by everyday uncertainty and challenges,” Leger’s executive summary read. “Happiness, while holding its ground overall, shows signs of fragility.”

Get breaking National news
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.
The survey found that people in the 18-to-24 and 24-to-34-year-old categories were more likely to report improved feelings of well-being, even if their overall happiness score remained below the national average.
In contrast, people in the 35-to-44 and 45-to-54 age brackets were more likely to report their happiness had deteriorated.
“There is a sense of well-being emerging among younger age groups,” the summary read. “However, this also highlights the importance of supporting adults in mid-life, who are more vulnerable to the pressures of working life.”
Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador were the three provinces with happiness levels above the national average of 68.7. They were followed, in descending order, by Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba and P.E.I. The territories were not included in the survey.
In the survey of the 10 largest cities, Mississauga and Montreal finished ahead of Hamilton, Calgary, Brampton, Ottawa, Edmonton, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto, in that order.
Women reported slightly higher happiness levels than men, at 69.4 versus 68.0.
Leger says the overall results confirm “a level of happiness that is relatively high but stagnant or even slightly down compared to the pre-pandemic period.”
To get the results, Leger surveyed 39,841 Canadians aged 18 and up between March 31 and April 13.
Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.
© 2025 The Canadian Press

Ontario Provincial Police are set to host a town hall in Quadeville, Ont., this evening to answer questions from residents about an attack on an eight-year-old child that was initially linked to an animal.
Police have arrested a 17-year-old boy in the case and he faces charges of attempted murder and sexual assault with a weapon.
Members of the small community 170 kilometres west of Ottawa say they were in shock after hearing about the arrest and hope to get clarity at today’s event in the town’s community centre.
Local resident Christine Hudder says she wants to know how police came up with the animal attack theory and why families were told for days to keep their children indoors.

Get breaking National news
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.
The victim was found with life-threatening injuries on June 24 after she was reported missing, and remains in hospital.
Police say they are planning to give as much information as possible to locals given that an investigation is still underway.

A Burlington, Ont., mother was unsettled to discover that an old photo of her children had been used in a fraudulent GoFundMe that attempted to elicit donations in connection the recent Texas floods.
Julie Cole told Global News that a friend had contacted her on social media to say that an old photo of her six children was being used in an attempt to collect ill-gotten gains.
“She reached out to me and she was like, ‘Hey, here’s a link to a GoFundMe. Sorry this has happened to you, but obviously a picture of your kids has been used without your consent and it’s being used for a GoFundMe to raise money, to help a family dealing with the Texas floods,’” she said.
Cole explained that the fake GoFundMe, which has since been removed by the company, was looking for donations to support a widowed mother of six kids in connection.
At least 120 people have died while more than 100 others remain unaccounted for as a result of the flooding, including 27 children and councilors from Camp Mystic.
“They were trying to raise $40,000 because of the three daughters had been victims of the Texas floods,” Cole said. “And the way it was presented felt very much like they were part of maybe that girl’s camp.”
Julie Cole told Global News that a friend had contacted her on social media to make that an old photo of her six children was being used in an attempt to collect ill-gotten gains.
Provided
Cole said once the listing was sent to her, she immediately contacted GoFundMe to get the fundraiser taken down.

Get breaking National news
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.
By Wednesday morning, the company had done so and in a statement to Global News, GoFundMe said that the fundraiser did not receive any donations and the account has been banned from creating any further fundraisers on the platform.
“GoFundMe has the most robust donor protection processes of any platform of our kind. We have round the clock trust and safety support, humans and technology making sure funds will get to where they are intended,” the statement offered.
After contacting the company, Cole said she shared the incident on her social media pages to raise awareness.
“So I did put it on my Facebook and I put it in my LinkedIn as like a heads-up learning experience kind of thing and there was a lot of outrage,” she said.
Cole also noted that while she is disappointed by the incident, she is well aware that her troubles are miniscule in comparison to those affected by the flooding.
“I do feel a little bit in myself that what I’m feeling is in no way comparable to what the actual families are feeling who have gone through the tragedies of the flooding,” she said.
The photo came from an old blog post she had written 16 years ago. Cole can date the picture as the baby in the photo is now getting ready to go for his driver’s test.
“I’m one of those, like, OG mommy bloggers from 20 years ago. So my kids have been on the internet. They have been sort of in the public eye,” she explained.
“And I know the risk is out there. And I think parents need to remember that, that their kids’ photos can be just screenshotted and used without consent. So there’s one lesson.
“I felt a little, well, very unsettled about it, particularly because of what it was being used for.”
In addition to being a parenting blogger, she also helped found Mabel’s Labels, which offers washable labels for kids clothing and other school items, in an effort to keep them out of the lost and found.
Julie Cole and her six kids in 2025.
Provided
Being a spokesperson for the company while raising six kids keeps her in the parenting sphere and she offered some other advice to parents about the images and social media.
“I think parents just have to be mindful and aware that once it’s out there, you know you’d like to think you’ll get consent or you’ll give consent if somebody asks or they want to use it, but people will just take it and they can just take,” she said.
“You have to be especially careful now with AI, because these photos can be altered.”
She also warned parents to check with their kids as they get older to see if they are OK with pics being posted and that people should be mindful of where they are sharing their donations.
“Another lesson out of this is people need to really be cautious and know where they’re putting their fundraising dollars,” Cole said.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
-
Uncategorized1 month ago
Shop Proud, Eat Proud, Be Proud — Ottawa Canada Day Market This June 28th
-
4 weeks ago
Canada’s world junior trial saw juries tossed, intense testimony. Here’s a recap
-
4 weeks ago
Measles circulating in northeastern B.C. community, health officials warn
-
4 weeks ago
Anishinabek Nation chief says he briefed Ontario police on protests against Bill 5
-
4 weeks ago
Ring of Fire road to bring prosperity to First Nation, problems for caribou: report
-
4 weeks ago
Jagmeet Singh apologizes for attending Kendrick Lamar concert after Drake calls him out
-
4 weeks ago
Former major leaguer, Jays doctor Ron Taylor dies
-
4 weeks ago
Dreaming of a lakeside cottage but can’t afford it? Co-ownership could open that door