BC Place

• 1. Introduction

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  BC Place drew 60,342 people to a Monday night soccer game on the 20th of June 1983, one day after the stadium officially opened. The Vancouver Whitecaps were hosting the Seattle Sounders in an ordinary North American Soccer League regular-season match. It was not a final or a playoff. More than sixty thousand people came anyway. What had Vancouver built on the north shore of False Creek that could fill itself on an unremarkable summer evening? And what would happen when, nearly a quarter-century later, the roof that made it possible tore open on a cold January morning?

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• 2. The Air-Supported Dome

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  Dillingham Construction broke ground in February 1981, working to a design by architecture firm Studio Phillips Barratt, Ltd. Structural engineering came from Geiger Berger Associates. The project was developed partly in preparation for Vancouver's 1986 World's Fair, Expo 86.

  The result of Geiger Berger's work was a fabric dome held aloft by continuous air pressure from within. No columns rose from the playing surface. The same principle had been applied at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That connection would prove more than conceptual: when BC Place eventually dismantled its original roof, the Metrodome stored sections of it for reuse.

  When the stadium opened in 1983, it was the world's largest air-supported domed structure. That record stood for more than two decades. The original roof was deflated for the last time on the 4th of May 2010. The building would reopen sixteen months later under a completely different design.

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• 3. The First Years

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  The BC Lions played their first game at BC Place on the 23rd of June 1983, four days after the official opening. In a preseason match, the Lions beat the Calgary Stampeders 41-19 before 53,472 fans. Their first regular season game followed on July 24, a 44-28 win over the Saskatchewan Roughriders with 41,810 in attendance.

  On the 18th of September 1984, Pope John Paul II addressed an over-capacity crowd of 60,000 for "A Celebration of Life." The address was part of his papal visit to the Archdiocese of Vancouver. It ranked among the most heavily attended events in the stadium's history. The Billy Graham Crusade followed a few months later, drawing similar numbers across eight consecutive nights.

  On the 2nd of May 1986, the Prince and Princess of Wales presided over the opening ceremonies of Expo 86 at BC Place. The stadium had been built in large part for this occasion. An Australian rules football exhibition the following year drew 32,789 spectators, a record for the largest AFL/VFL crowd outside Australia. In 1998, the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Seattle Seahawks 24-21 in an NFL exhibition before 45,000 fans.

  In the mid-1990s, the Seattle Mariners explored plans to hold regular season MLB games at BC Place. They were unable to receive approval from the league. In January 2007, the building would face a challenge that had nothing to do with which team was scheduled to play.

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• 4. When the Roof Fell

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  Snow accumulated on BC Place's Teflon Fibreglass roof on the 5th of January 2007, despite protocols requiring zero ice buildup. The weight tore the ETFE-coated fabric near Gate G on the south side, where the roof met the concrete bowl. Air began escaping through the gap, and maintenance staff chose to accelerate the deflation deliberately. Controlling the process would protect the intact panels.

  Under normal inflation, the roof's crown rose 27 metres, or 90 feet, above the bowl's rim. Deflated, it settled onto its steel support cables just 6 metres above the seating and field. Rain and melted snow flooded the open bowl and had to be pumped out. No one was injured.

  An independent investigation identified three contributing factors: accidental rapid pressurization, lightly gusting wind, and previously undetected damage in the fabric. A temporary replacement panel was installed on January 19, and the roof was reinflated. The BC Contractors Association held an exhibition in the building the week of January 23. The roof leaked in several places during rain that week. A permanent panel replaced the temporary one in June 2007, just before the start of the CFL season.

  A formal announcement about the stadium's long-term future came sixteen months later.

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• 5. Half a Billion Dollars

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  On the 16th of May 2008, the government announced more than $150 million in major renovations to BC Place. The work proceeded in two phases. Phase 1 covered seating, washrooms, concessions, luxury suites, and reinforcement of the building's ring beam. It was completed in October 2009.

  BC Place hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the XXI Olympic Winter Games in February 2010. The opening ceremonies of the X Paralympic Winter Games followed in March. The stadium was the first air-supported structure to hold Olympic Winter Games opening ceremonies. It was the 24th Olympic venue overall to do so. It was also the third CFL venue and third Canadian venue to serve as an Olympic stadium. Montreal's Olympic Stadium and Calgary's McMahon Stadium came before it.

  Roof construction began in May 2010, immediately after the Winter Paralympics ended and the original roof came down for the last time. PCL Westcoast Constructors Inc. built the replacement. Stantec Architecture Ltd. and Geiger Engineers designed it; Schlaich Bergermann & Partner served as consulting engineers, and Genivar, Inc. handled services engineering. The cable-supported retractable technology had first been used at the Commerzbank-Arena in Frankfurt, Germany. The central opening of the new roof measures 100 by 85 metres, matching the playing field below. The fabric retracts into a pod above the suspended videoboard at the centre.

  The total official budget for Phase 1 and the revitalization was $514 million. The completed roof was the largest cable-supported retractable roof in the world. Geiger Engineers also designed the new centre-hung scoreboard. It became the second largest of its type in North America, after the one at AT&T Stadium. Columnist Brian Hutchinson praised the improved acoustics and the bright, airy atmosphere. He noted those qualities had been missing from the original dome, from the Montreal Olympic Stadium, and from the Rogers Centre. TSN analyst and former CFL player Chris Schultz praised both the design and the engineering.

  Between September 2011 and April 2015, BC Place's artificial turf drew criticism from professional soccer players for its performance. A replacement surface was laid in May 2015 at a total cost of $1.327 million. Canada Soccer and Rugby Canada contributed $500,000 CDN to the project. Canada's Rugby Sevens coach Liam Middleton described the new surface as "better than some natural grass surfaces they've played on."

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• 6. The CFL Home

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  BC Place's single-game record for Canadian football is 59,478, reached three times in 1985 and 1986. When the building was constructed, its floor was too small for the regulation 25-yard CFL end zone. BC Place became the first CFL stadium to use 20-yard end zones instead. Players found the adjustment effective, and the shortened format was adopted league-wide in 1986.

  BC Place has hosted the Grey Cup ten times: 1983, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1994, 1999, 2005, 2011, 2014, and 2024. The 1994 championship is the most discussed. The BC Lions faced the Baltimore Football Club, an American expansion team. A Lions defeat would have sent the Grey Cup trophy out of Canada for the first time. Lui Passaglia ended the game with a last-second field goal. Baltimore won the trophy the following year, but the kick in 1994 remains the most remembered moment in BC Place's Grey Cup history.

  The 47th Vanier Cup was played at BC Place on the 25th of November 2011, paired with the Grey Cup Festival for the first time. McMaster Marauders defeated Laval Rouge et Or 41-38 in double overtime before 24,935 fans. The game became known as "Best Game... Ever" and is widely regarded as one of the most exciting games in Canadian football history. It was the first championship held in the newly renovated facility.

  On the 2nd of March 2014, the Ottawa Senators and Vancouver Canucks played the NHL Heritage Classic at BC Place. It was the first NHL game ever played in a retractable roof stadium.

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• 7. Soccer's Stage

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  Soccer Bowl '83 came to BC Place in the stadium's first year, with the Tulsa Roughnecks defeating the Toronto Blizzard 2-0 before 53,326 spectators. The original Vancouver Whitecaps of the North American Soccer League played at BC Place from 1983 until the team folded in 1984. A second incarnation, initially called the Vancouver 86ers, played exhibition matches there in 1991 and 1992 before returning for regular season games in 1995.

  On the 7th of November 2007, a Whitecaps exhibition match against the LA Galaxy drew 48,172 spectators, drawn largely by the presence of David Beckham. That figure would come to seem modest against what the MLS era would produce. After the Whitecaps joined Major League Soccer and moved into the renovated BC Place, they initially sold only lower bowl seating. They still drew a regular-season MLS record of 27,683 against Seattle Sounders FC in 2018, with the upper bowl closed. The upper bowl opened for a 2023 playoff match against Los Angeles FC, which drew 30,204 fans. On the 25th of May 2024, a regular season match against Inter Miami CF attracted 51,035 spectators. Lionel Messi had joined the club the previous year.

  BC Place hosted eight FIFA Women's World Cup matches in 2015: five group stage games, two round of 16 matches, and one quarterfinal. The Final between Japan and the United States was played on the 5th of July 2015, before 54,027 fans. On the 5th of December 2023, the stadium was temporarily renamed Christine Sinclair Place. Canada played Australia in a farewell match honoring the national team captain.

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• 8. Nights of Record

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  On the 2nd of September 2023, BC Place set an overall attendance record when 65,061 people attended an Ed Sheeran concert. That surpassed the previous record of 63,803, set by a U2 concert in 2009. Both marks exceeded the highest attendance reached for any sporting event at the stadium.

  In April 2024, Diljit Dosanjh became the first Punjabi artist to sell out BC Place. On the 6th of December 7, and 8, 2024, the stadium hosted the final three shows of Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour. Those performances closed out the run's global schedule. A naming rights agreement in 2023 had designated the playing surface the Save-on-Foods Field at BC Place. Four decades after opening, the stadium's single largest crowd had not come for a championship or an Olympic ceremony. It had come for a concert.

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