And to make matters worse, Ed Sheeran was the one playing there
Who could've predicted this? More than a year since Rogers Stadium had its opening as Toronto's (temporary) largest outdoor concert venue, fans are still mixing it up with the city's other stadium, the very similarly named Rogers Centre.
Over the weekend, the biggest K-pop band in the world, BTS, touched down in Canada for the first time in almost a decade for two back-to-back nights at Rogers Stadium, more than 10 years on from their Toronto debut at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in 2015.
It was quite the event, with a near-cancellation due to a massive summer storm forcing a brief abandonment of the bleachers — but the show went on, and everything ended triumphantly with ARMY members living their best lives, singing along with their idols in the pouring rain. Well, the ones that made it to the right place, anyway.
On the r/Toronto subreddit yesterday (August 23), u/AmountFragrant8750 made a post entitled "Rogers Centre vs Rogers Stadium is genuinely ruining people's night, and Live Nation should've seen this coming."
The poster had apparently been in line for Ed Sheeran's concert at the Rogers Centre on Saturday (August 22) night, and witnessed numerous BTS fans show up to the wrong venue. "The amount of people who showed up thinking they were in the right place was honestly kind of heartbreaking to watch," they wrote. "You'd see the confusion on their faces first, then the slow realization that they weren't at Roger's [sic] Stadium, then that scramble to figure out how they were even going to get to Downsview in time."
I can only imagine the crushing feeling of showing up to see BTS and then finding out the one performing there is actually Ed Sheeran. Toronto is the only Canadian stop on the BTS world tour, so many folks came in from outside of the city. And even if they hadn't, the amount of money they spent on the tickets — and possibly a peak-time Uber trip to have a shot in hell of not missing the show — was likely exorbitant.
While many baseball fans in particular still can't help but call it the SkyDome, it at least makes sense for the Rogers Centre to bear the telecommunications giant's name, when the company owns the Toronto Blue Jays — but does Rogers really need the advertising? We all know the drill: you have your phone plan with Bell or Rogers for however long it takes for them to no longer be willing to offer you a good deal, and then you switch to the other one, occasionally throwing in a stint with Telus, Koodo or Freedom Mobile for good measure.
As we near the end of Rogers Stadium's second season of an approximate five-year-run before it's demolished and Northcrest Developments transforms the industrial land of the former Downsview Airport into new neighbourhoods, some might think it's too late to do anything about the confusion between the two venues — but it certainly seems necessary. Perhaps we can make Oasis's designation of its "stupid fucking stands that were built 30 minutes ago" stick? Or Coldplay's "weird stadium in the middle of nowhere"?
Or, yeah, we could just go back to calling the other one the SkyDome — especially since there's now also a Rogers Centre in Ottawa (plus Rogers Arena in Vancouver and Rogers Place in Edmonton, for those following along at home).
