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Next year, the largest concert venue in town will no longer be Moda Center. Now that the Portland Timbers plan to reintroduce musical acts to the venue, Providence Park will have that honor.
Today, the professional soccer club announced that after spending years and more than $130 million to upgrade the facility, it is once again possible to have musicians share the pitch when it isn’t scheduled to hold matches. Seating capacity for shows will be about 30,000, while the Moda Center fits somewhere around 20,500 people.
The first act to play the space will be Seattle-founded rockers the Foo Fighters, who are scheduled to take the stage Friday, Aug. 16, 2024.
That will mark the first time in nearly two decades that the stadium has been transformed into a concert venue. Acts at what was once known as Portland Civic Stadium included everyone from Def Leppard in 2005 to David Bowie in 1987.
The very first person to headline a concert there was the King himself: Elvis Presley played to an audience of 14,600 people in 1957. It was one of the country’s first outdoor arena shows—a notion that seems hard to believe these days given how common they are, with stars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé performing in football stadiums that can hold some 70,000. And while we may not be able to get the likes of Queen Bey at Providence Park, the Portland Timbers hope that other large tours that have previously skipped over Portland make it a stop.
“This is very exciting for us, for our fans and for the city of Portland,” Timbers CEO Heather Davis stated in a press release. “We are proud to continue our investment in the vibrancy of downtown Portland as Providence Park becomes the largest concert venue in the Portland area. Artists who had to bypass Portland on their West Coast tours will have a great new option to consider.”
Foo Fighter tickets for the Providence Park show go on sale at 10 am Friday, Oct. 6.