Inside Everton FC’s new ‘must play’ stadium

As the stadium concert business heats up, more mega venues are expanding their offering to include live music. In the North West of England, competition among stadiums has always been fierce, with Liverpool’s Anfield plus Manchester’s Etihad Stadium and Emirates Old Trafford all well-versed in hosting A-list artists.

Now, Liverpool’s city rivals Everton FC are throwing their hat in the ring with a new stadium that promises to be a ‘must-play’ 365 entertainment venue for the world’s biggest artists and footballers. Bramley-Moore Dock – which replaces Everton’s home of 130 years, Goodison Park – is initially set to host a maximum of four non-football, major events starting in 2026, giving the home club time to christen the turf from August 2025.

With the ability to host events between 5,000 capacity and 53,000, the new ground will be the biggest stadium to come on stream in the UK since Tottenham Hotspur Stadium opened more than six years ago. But can Bramley-Moore Dock compete with neighbouring Anfield, which has hosted the likes of Taylor Swift, Elton John and P!nk? Everton FC’s head of events Suzie Parker‑Myers thinks so.

“For concerts, we’ll be able to host between 45,000 and 48,000 fans,” says Parker‑Myers, who is overseeing the stadium’s programming and leading engagement with top promoters.

“It’s a big stadium but it’s very intimate. You can be back in the back row and feel like you’re very close to the pitch. Any promoter will be happy knowing that the person in the back row is going to have a great time, as is the person who’s probably paid a fair whack to be at the front of the stage.”

“Promoters could save up to six figures using the Plaza”

Indeed, the stands at Bramley-Moore Dock have been constructed at a 35-degree gradient – the steepest permitted by UK law – meaning that punters across the stadium are as close to the action as possible.

“Architect Dan Meis, who is the Stadium Concept Design Guardian, wanted to create an intimacy” explains Parker Myers. “For football, we wanted to make sure that we had home-field advantage and that visiting teams felt intimidated like they do when it comes to [our old ground] Goodison. But that then works brilliantly for music, with people in the stands closer to the stage than they would be in other stadiums.”

The venue also boasts 5,000 premium seats with a “perfect” view of the stage that can be sold for “three or four times the price of what’s on the pitch”. Another bonus for promoters and concert productions is the ability to drive trucks into the north stand where the stage will be, enabling a fast load-in and load-out.

But the most surprising aspect of the Bramley-Moore Dock campus is the 17,000-capacity enclosed plaza in front of the stadium, which has the potential to host open-air concerts and festivals.

“Promoters could save up to six figures using this space,” claims Parker-Myers. “There’s no need to hire toilets or food vendors because the stadium concourse opens up right there, and the plaza’s outer wall means you can save on fencing and staffing.”

The venue will be licensed to hold more than 15 events each year on the plaza, with a number of promoters already in discussion about the potential to hold day festivals or one-off shows there.

As Parker-Myers explains, Everton FC’s ambition to become a live music venue is a major component of the club’s commercial strategy. Income from concerts will count as commercial revenue for the football club, giving it more headroom to spend on players.

With concerts expected to bring in around three times more than matchdays on food and beverage alone, live music will be major leverage for the success of the home team. This is especially important for Everton, which last year was found to have breached the Premier League’s spending rules (aka Profit and Sustainability Rules), resulting in a stringent points’ deduction.

Bramley-Moore Dock doesn’t just usher in a new era for music fans or for Everton FC – which has been looking to move home for over three decades – it’s also a new chapter for the city of Liverpool. The port on which Bramley-Moore Dock was built was previously a World Heritage site that was locked to the public. “One of the huge benefits of building here is that it’s a forgotten part of the city and the stadium opens up that heritage,” adds Parker-Myers.

While the stadium project reportedly contributed to the loss of the site’s World Heritage status, the club says it spent £55 million on preserving, restoring and refitting heritage assets including a hydraulic tower, capstans, mooring posts, railway lines and cobbles.

“It’s a very unique design for a stadium people are really proud of that”

These historical artefacts are key features of the new stadium, designed by American architect Dan Meis, the brains behind other sports and entertainment facilities such as Staples Center (Los Angeles), T-Mobile Park (Seattle) and Paycor Stadium (Ohio). The main structure draws on the ‘brick box’ warehouse typology of neighbouring buildings like the Tobacco Warehouse and Titanic Hotel, while the steel and glass roof gives the stadium a modern finish.

“It’s a very unique design for a stadium people are really proud of that,” she continues. “Dan lived and breathed it for now on five or six years and became a bit of a cult hero.”

“He took everything we wanted and put it into a brief. The stadium needed to be close to the city and have all the mod-cons and technology, it needed to be sustainable and navigate the hurdles from a planning perspective.”

Meis appears to have met the brief, resulting in a stadium that’s said to be one of Europe’s most sustainable and the UK’s most connected. Bramley-Moore Dock is also a product of an eight-year consultation with residents on the club’s key design principles – living up to Everton FC’s slogan as The People’s Club. “We’ve been engaging supporters on what they want from this stadium since 2016, so there’s a sense of ownership over it,” adds Parker-Myers.

“The Everton Stadium opens up a whole new world of possibilities for the city”

“We didn’t brand that consultation as Everton. This was a stadium for the city of Liverpool and it was about removing the tribalism that football brings.”

Indeed the entire city should benefit from Bramley-Moore Dock and its claimed £1.3bn economic impact, creating more than 15,000 jobs and attracting 1.4m new visitors. And Liverpool’s status as a UNESCO City of Music and a football mecca only stands to increase.

“The Everton Stadium opens up a whole new world of possibilities for the city, and I’m sure it could play host to many unforgettable moments outside of the football season,” says Liverpool’s director of culture, Claire McColgan CBE.

“This year marks Liverpool’s 10th anniversary of being a UNESCO City of Music, and this new, world-class event space on our waterfront would play an important role in terms of nurturing our music credentials, attracting household names to perform, boosting the economy and supporting jobs. We’re a city where football and music unite people, and this amazing venue can only strengthen Liverpool’s place as a global destination.”

Parker-Myers concludes: “It’s not necessarily about competing with Anfield. We actually want to complement them. This city’s togetherness is what makes Liverpool special. And ultimately, that’s why a stadium on the waterfront of Liverpool belongs to the city as much as Everton.”

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