Villa Park boss on hosting global stars and farewell gig for local legends Black Sabbath..
Villa Park boss on hosting global stars and farewell gig for local legends Black Sabbath
by MusicWeek Staff
July 4th 2025 at 6:59AM
Villa Park boss on hosting global stars and farewell gig for local legends Black Sabbath
Villa Park is ramping up its ambitions to be a major concert venue for superstar artists, as it prepares to host summer dates including the farewell show from Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath.
Amid signs of continuing strength in the UK live business for huge outdoor shows, the Birmingham football stadium, home to Aston Villa, is expanding its number of music events in 2025 with plans to increase that further in the years ahead.
The 45,000-capacity Back To The Beginning all-day concert with Black Sabbath (July 5) is part of Aston Villa’s broader strategy to establish Villa Park as a “world-class live events venue”, combining football with year-round entertainment.
“The cornerstone of our strategy, from a venue perspective, is how do we bring more people to Villa Park more often and have them stay longer?” said chief operating officer Ben Hatton. “Hosting music events is at the heart of that strategy.”
A recent redevelopment of Villa Park is designed to generate new revenue streams and reinforce Aston Villa’s status as an economic force for the region. The ambitious project includes the North Grounds redevelopment and the opening of The Warehouse, a new, multi-use 3,500-capacity venue for year-round entertainment including live music.
As well as the all-day rock event with Osbourne and Black Sabbath, this summer’s line-up has included Guns N’ Roses (June 23) and will continue with Kendrick Lamar & SZA (July 10).
The new music strategy has been developed since 2023, when Villa Park staged shows by Pink and Bruce Springsteen, followed by Foo Fighters last year. Hatton said the aim is to expand from three shows in 2025 to between three and six artists with options for multiple nights in the years ahead.
“We are now on the map as a venue as far as promoters are concerned,” said Hatton. “We’re flexible in terms of capacity and we’re geographically really well located in the West Midlands. We’ve worked hard to get to where we are, which we think is now a must-play venue on the UK touring circuit.”
Aston Villa has worked with various promoters, including SJM and AEG Presents. Live Nation is promoting the 2025 shows, with Back To The Beginning featuring multiple acts.
Local hero and Villa fan Ozzy Osbourne will perform a short solo set and join his Black Sabbath band members Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward as headliners.
The venue has been developing a relationship with Ozzy Osbourne and manager Sharon Osbourne, including an Adidas launch of a Villa shirt that honoured the “Prince of Darkness” and Black Sabbath. Fans paid homage to Osbourne with a tifo in January at the Champions League game against Celtic.
“Ozzy is certainly up there amongst our most famous fans,” said Hatton. “We wanted to pay homage to him, so for the 23/24 season we changed our walkout song to [1980 debut single] Crazy Train and we started a dialogue soon after that with both Ozzy and Sharon, which started the relationship.”
We’ve worked hard to get to where we are, which we think is now a must-play venue on the UK touring circuit
Ben Hatton.
As well as celebrating the creators of heavy metal with Sabbath’s first performance with the original line-up in 20 years, the event will feature Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Halestorm, Alice In Chains, Lamb Of God, Anthrax and Mastodon. A supergroup is being lined up with the concert’s music director Tom Morello, plus Billy Corgan, David Draiman, Duff McKagan, Slash, Jonathan Davis, Lzzy Hale and more.
“It’s huge, it is a moment in time – everybody is really excited about that,” said Hatton. “And it’s a global event – our hospitality packages have been sold to a truly global audience. With the number of countries [from which fans] are now traveling to see this, it really does put Villa Park, the West Midlands and Birmingham on the map.”
As a farewell performance, Osbourne wanted it to be in his home city rather than the capital.
“It was fundamental for them that it’s a local show,” said Hatton. “Birmingham is the home of the genre. It’s also important to point out they wouldn’t have come to Villa Park had the facilities not been first class.”
Profits will be shared among Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice.
“This is a huge event that will have global eyes on it,” added Hatton. “By far the most important focus for Sharon and her team was that we gave them confidence that we can do the right job of managing this event, given the scale and global nature of the artists.”
Following their Super Bowl duet, Kendrick Lamar and SZA will appear at Villa Park as part of the Grand National Tour.
“We’ve worked hard to not be pigeonholed, we are genre-agnostic,” said Hatton. “The conversations that we’re having around 2026 will see us broaden the range of genres out of that more traditional rock genre that we’ve attracted.”
Hatton suggested that football stadia “make sense from a promoter perspective because so much of the infrastructure exists”. There’s also the benefit of a closed season window for concerts, with Villa able to extend that compared to some clubs as it re-lays the pitch rather than re-growing the grass.
Following the revamping of the hospitality areas, the next phase of the redevelopment includes improving access to the site for promoters and converting a derelict building into a brand new venue, The Warehouse.
“The new venue is needed in Birmingham, there’s nothing similar to it – so we’re pretty excited about that,” said Hatton.
“With the enhancements last summer, and the further enhancements that we’re making this summer, the customer experience certainly will be as good as anywhere,” he added.
Hatton is now confident that Villa Park is on course to be a premier destination for international stars.
“That’s exactly where we need to be,” he said. “Everything we do with promoters and that we’re doing at the venue – maintaining flexibility, being as good a host as we can be –
is all about ensuring that. We’ve got to be towards the top of that list for every artist wanting to come through the UK.”
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