The Weeknd is the reason Arsenal vs Man City isn't at Wembley and the money involved is staggering

The FA Community Shield is up for grabs on Sunday afternoon, but Wembley won't be the host due to a bizarre scheduling clash with The Weeknd.

Arsenal and Manchester City will contest the Community Shield somewhere unfamiliar on Sunday, with English football's traditional curtain-raiser taking place at Cardiff's Principality Stadium rather than Wembley.

The reason? While Mikel Arteta and Enzo Maresca's teams are facing each other around 150 miles away, The Weeknd will be performing at Wembley on exactly the same day.

And a closer look at the numbers surrounding the singer's enormous run of Wembley concerts shows just how much money is potentially being generated by the events occupying England's national stadium.

Premier League champions Arsenal will face FA Cup winners Man City in the Community Shield final. (Image: Getty Images)

Why isn't Arsenal vs Man City being played at Wembley?

Each year, the Premier League champions and FA Cup winners face off in a special match to raise money grassroots initiatives, national charity partners like the Alzheimer's Society, and local causes nominated by the 124 clubs participating from the first round proper of the preceding FA Cup.

Named the Community Shield, the match is viewed by many as the unofficial start to the football season, with the Premier League kicking the following weekend, August 22.

This year it is Arsenal and Manchester City will face off at 3pm on Sunday, but instead of taking place at Wembley the match will be played at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff.

Back in May, the FA announced that Wembley would be unavailable on August 15 and 16 because of “pre-planned concerts,” meaning that the Community Shield landed, scheduled for the same weekend due to the altered 2026/27 football calendar, had to be moved.

The concerts in question are part of The Weeknd's After Hours Til Dawn tour, with the pop star playing at Wembley five times in six days on August 14-16 and August 18-19.

This year's community shield marks the third time that it has been hosted away from London for the third time since Wembley reopened in 2007, with Principality Stadium selected as the host for the first time since 2006, having served as the venue for the Community Shield, FA Cup final and EFL Cup final between 2001-2007.

How much money could The Weeknd's Wembley concerts generate?

Although the decision is no doubt frustrating for fans hoping to visit the most iconic football ground in the country, the figures involved in staging The Weeknd's concert show just how lucrative the event could be.

Tickets for The Weeknd at Wembley start from £60.25 for restricted-view seats, while standard seats rise to as much as £336.45 each.

For fans looking to stand, general admission tickets cost £145, while Gold Circle tickets closer to the stage are priced at £177.75.

Although the exact attendance is not yet known, the concerts are expected to have a capacity of around 87,000 to 90,000 people.

The midpoint between the cheapest £60.25 ticket and the most expensive £336.45 standard ticket is £198.35. While that does not represent the actual average ticket price, it can be used to illustrate the enormous sums potentially involved.

At £198.35 per ticket, a sellout crowd of 87,000 would generate around £17.26 million in gross ticket sales, rising to approximately £17.85 million with 90,000 people inside Wembley.

And that's before considering the premium hospitality packages available.

Wembley Stadium Gold and Diamond packages are priced at £599 and £799 per person respectively, while private-box experiences are also available for groups of eight, 12 or 20.

Those packages include a dedicated host and private chef, as well as food and complimentary beer, wine, soft drinks, tea and coffee. At £799 per person, filling a 20-person box would generate £15,980 in ticket revenue alone.

The difference becomes even more striking when compared with the Community Shield.

Standard tickets for Arsenal's clash against Manchester City range from £30 to £55, with premium tickets available for £75.

Even in the hypothetical scenario where all 90,000 seats at Wembley were sold for £55, gross ticket sales would amount to £4.95million.

By comparison, the illustrative £17.85million figure for a sold-out Weeknd concert is more than three-and-a-half times as much.

Of course, those figures do not represent the amount Wembley itself would make from either event. The precise revenue split between the stadium, promoters, artists and other parties is not publicly known, while taxes and the considerable costs associated with staging the events would also need to be deducted.

But the comparison offers a glimpse at the huge difference in the potential ticket revenue generated by the two events.

How important are concerts to Wembley?

With such high numbers, it comes as no surprise that concerts are of the utmost importance to Wembley as the FA.

During the 2023/24 financial year, the iconic venue hosted 10 concerts, including Taylor Swift's massively popular Eras Tour.

More recently, the FA described summer 2025 as the busiest summer in Wembley's history, with Oasis, Dua Lipa, Lana Del Rey, Linkin Park and Guns N' Roses among the acts performing there.

The FA specifically said growth in sponsorship, events and Experiences by Wembley revenue helped its financial performance.