As Pan Am gets another $74M, Hamilton stadium finish delayed again

(Updated)

There were more delays announced today for Hamilton’s Pan Am Stadium. But this time it’s not affecting football fans. The latest delays mean all the seats still won’t be available for this weekend’s Keith Urban show.

Hamilton Tiger-Cats owner Bob Young took a one million dollar gamble when he booked superstar country singer Keith Urban into the new stadium for this weekend. Now we’ve learned that some of the seating for Saturday’s show won’t be available because of ongoing construction delays and no one is saying how many, if any ticket holders this could affect.

“We’ve have Keith Urban and Darius Rucker coming to the first music event.”

That was a confident Bob Young in August announcing the very first concert at the new stadium, well before construction was complete: “We’ve written the cheque to Keith and Darius to come to Hamilton so this is happening, there is no cancellation.”

No cancellation and no backup plan. The show itself is not in jeopardy but today the builder announced some seating on the west side of the stadium would not be ready for Saturday’s show. There will only be one elevator working and the builder hasn’t even applied for an expanded occupancy permit yet.

Builder Greg Stack: “We’ll be doing that this week.”

The stadium will eventually hold 24-thousand seats. 18-thousand seats have been available for Ticats games since September 1st but it’s unclear just how many will be ready for September 27th. Team officials would not go on camera but say 16,000 tickets have been sold for the concert so far.

But CHCH has learned the team has been practically giving away tickets. Blasting their mailing list to offer cheap seats.

Disappointing possibly for the man signing that one million dollar cheque but good for fans.

As of today you could still get up close and personal with Urban as tickets in the second row from the stage are still on sale. Some seats being offered for as little as $30.

There will be limited concessions open as well.

If organizers were expecting to sell 24-thousand seats to this show to make money and only 18,000 are available, that’s approximately 25 percent less revenue. Not a great start to the Ticats foray into concert promotion.