Check Out Toronto’s Tricked-out Stadium

At exhibition place on Toronto’s waterfront, BMO Field, the city’s landmark soccer venue, has been renamed and redone just for the sporting event of the summer. It’s now known as Toronto Stadium, and it’s ready for the World Cup.

BMO Field is no stranger to shape-shifting. Normally, the stadium seats about 28,000, but crews had to drop in thousands of temporary seats for the 2016 Grey Cup, the 2017 MLS Cup and the NHL’s Centennial Classic game in 2017. Now, the World Cup will bring record crowds through the stadium’s turnstiles: FIFA requires that host venues seat at least 45,000. Commuters on the nearby Gardiner Expressway may have spotted the criss-crossing metal scaffolding of an entirely new stand, which now juts out of the building’s north end. To clear space for that grandstand, the stadium’s singular giant screen is no more. But on to better things: there are four enormous LED video scoreboards, each one as big as the old monitor, in the corners of the stadium, and a new, world-class AV system. Even the grass is greener—or, at least, stronger: there’s a new pitch made from 95 per cent natural sod. The rest is synthetic fibre designed for stability and high-use recovery.

For the fans, there’s new tech and new food. At some concession stands, generative AI and computer interfaces will make bothersome cash-out lines a relic of the past. An expanded kitchen will dish up as many as 130 new offerings during the tournament. The menu is international, but the ingredients—Atlantic salmon, Alberta beef, Quebec cheese—will be all-Canadian. 

Even with all this expansion, the stadium remains the tournament’s smallest; the largest, Dallas’s AT&T Stadium, has a staggering 94,000 seats. The whole endeavour took a year and a half and racked up a bill of nearly $160 million, with costs split between the city and MLSE, which operates the stadium. For monster renovation projects like this, staying on track is no small feat—remember Milano-Cortina’s frantic speedrun to complete venues for the Olympics a few months ago? It didn’t help that this past winter was brutal; Toronto experienced a record-breaking single-day snowfall in January. On the frostiest days, the construction crew abandoned work on the seating and moved indoors to chip away at refreshing the concourse and suites. Lucky that they did—the stage is now successfully set for Toronto’s six World Cup matches, which kick off with a home-team game on June 12.