OverActive media unveils plans for $500 million performance venue at Exhibition Place

TORONTO — OverActive Media has unveiled the design for a new sports media and entertainment venue at Exhibition Place in Toronto, an almost $500 million project that, if approved, is expected to be completed in 2025.

The privately financed, purpose-built venue, is proposed on four acres on the north side of Lake Shore Boulevard, across from the Ontario Place lands. The venue is expected to become the “epicentre” for what is starting to emerge as Toronto’s future meeting place for sports, media and entertainment, indicates a release, adding it is expected to host over 200 events a year, primarily music and entertainment bookings but also major city-wide conventions, corporate events and product launches, awards shows and a full slate of esports events.

OverActive Media is the owner of four major global esport franchises, including Toronto’s two professional teams, Toronto Ultra of the Call of Duty League and Toronto Defiant of the Overwatch League, and the venue will be home for the two teams.

The building composition, designed by Populous, delivers an “iconic architectural presence along the Toronto waterfront and reflects a modern expression of a new age theatre for sports and entertainment.”

“The design of the theatre was neither conceived as a sports arena nor an opera house, rather, a new typology that straddles the two – a state-of-the-art performance venue. The theatre architecture creates a merger of the old and the new,” said Jonathan Mallie, senior principal and lead designer for Populous, in a statement. “The old channeling the rhythmic repetition of historic landmark theatres, and the new, integrating the progressive forms of avant-garde 21^st century design. In combination, a symbiotic balance delivers a one-of-a-kind theatre architecture, unique to Toronto and the world.”