Proceedings|The reopening of the former Hartwall arena will increase competition in the venue market.
Tuesday it was reported that embargoed Russian oligarchs have sold the former Hartwall Arena, i.e. the current Helsinki Hall.
The buyer was revealed to be a group of Finnish investors. The group’s main investor is Heikki Viitikko.
The oligarchs who owned the hall for years were put on the embargo list after Russia started a war of aggression in Ukraine in early 2022. Since then, the arena has stood unused in Helsinki.
Now, however, it seems that the Helsinki hall will be opened and put into use again at some point in time. This has also sparked a discussion about the fate of the Nokia Arena in Tampere.
For the past couple of years, major events have been strongly concentrated in Tampere, while Helsinki has not had a large enough covered venue. Is there now a danger that the events will move back to the capital?
Nokia Arena managing director Marko Hurme is not worried about the situation. He points out that when the Nokia arena started to be built and its business model was planned, the then Hartwall arena was still in full force as a competitor.
“Regarding international concerts, we think that our competitors are all the big venues in Northern Europe. North of Hamburg. I consider it a good thing that the Helsinki Hall is finally being opened again. Welcome to the competition”, says Hurme.
“The effects will certainly hit the capital region the most and especially the ice rink in Helsinki. In the future, the concerts will be held in bigger venues within the same city.”
Marko Hurme is the CEO of Nokia Arena.
The competitive effect of the opening of the Helsinki Hall does not only apply to concerts, but of course also to major sporting events. The Nokia Arena already has them on its calendar for 2027 and 2028.
“I consider the growth of competition to be quite normal. There is competition in business, and sometimes it increases. I’ve always believed that the arena will be opened in Helsinki at some point, and that’s fine,” says Hurme.
“Perhaps an even more interesting question is how much more competition there will be. In recent years, there have been several other arena projects in progress in addition to our arena.”
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I consider it a good thing that the Helsinki Hall is finally being opened again. Welcome to the competition
Event organizers there has been talk from the field that the big international organizers are not very happy to drive their camos from Helsinki to Tampere and back when they come to Finland. That takes time, and as we know, time is money.
Even so, even in the camp of the organizers, it is believed that there will continue to be orders for concerts in the Nokia Arena. The manager of a large international event organizer says that before the corona virus, we were in a situation where more events would have been offered than the capacity of the Finnish event venues was sufficient for.
The former Hartwall arena is a competitor to the Nokia arena among others.
Nokia-arena CEO Hurme does not believe that all events will remain in Helsinki in the future.
“I don’t think it’s very likely. We work with all the big event organizers, and with many of them the plans stretch for years. Cooperation will continue as normal.”
“When I became the leader here in 2019, I was already thinking about how the cooperation between two arenas that meet international standards that are at a reasonable distance from each other would work. It will be interesting to see how the matter will be operated. Some events we lose, some we win, and there is a place for cooperation as well.”
Hurme admits that it is to the advantage of the capital region that some events are specifically organized in different capitals.
“We have already lost a few such events. So from our point of view, it won’t change anything, but the organizers will benefit from having a bigger venue in the capital.”
Nokia Arena the advantage compared to the Helsinki hall is that the arena is modern and enables things that were not possible in the Helsinki hall that opened in 1997.
The Helsinki Hall can accommodate a little more people, but the Nokia Arena allows for a finer and more versatile show.
“This is visible to consumers and, for example, in corporate events where digital surfaces are used. We have that advantage”, says Hurme.
Hurme also brings up another issue that minimizes the damage caused by traveling to Tampere for event organizers.
“I claim that we are currently the best in Europe in terms of conversion speed, at least top level. That is, we can move from one event to another very quickly. It turns into money for the event organizer, because the time required for construction and dismantling is shorter here than anywhere else.”
The Nokia Arena opened in December 2021.