The Eagles, the Doobie Brothers and Grupo Firme will be among the first acts to perform at a new indoor arena opening in the Palm Springs area.
Acrisure Arena is a 11,000-seat, $300 million venue in the final stages of construction in Thousand Palms. The 300,000-square-foot property is being developed by the Oak View Group with partners that include event promoter Live Nation.
Oak View Group executives and Coachella Valley media personalities announced the lineup on Tuesday at the Margaritaville Resort in Palm Springs.
It begins with a soft opening on Dec. 15 with the Doobie Brothers, who are currently out on a 50th anniversary tour. Grupo Firme, the Latin Grammy-nominated banda act that performed at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in April, will follow on Dec. 16. Maroon 5 will do a New Year’s Eve gig on Dec. 31 and the Eagles will perform at the official grand opening of the venue on Jan. 18, 2023.
Jimmy Buffett, of “Margaritaville” fame, will also perform, but the date has not been announced.
John Bolton, senior vice president and general manager of the arena, said they connected with Buffet a couple of months ago when he was visiting the Palm Springs resort and thought it would be a nice touch to hold the announcement in the resort’s ballroom.
For now, only tickets to the Grupo Firme show on Dec. 16 will be going on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, Sept. 23 at Ticketmaster.com.
“They will sell out in about a second,” predicted Oak View Group chairman and chief executive officer Tim Leiweke.
Tickets for all of the other concerts will go on sale at later dates.
To ensure that the arena will be ready for announced concert dates, Leiweke said construction crews began shifts at 2 a.m. during summer heat and recently started working weekends. The arena has a professional ice hockey expansion team called the Coachella Valley Firebirds that will hold its first home match against the Tuscon Roadrunners on Dec. 18.
Acrisure Arena was originally announced in 2019 for downtown Palm Springs, near what is now Agua Caliente Casino Palm Springs, but Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians later dropped out as partners.
The arena was built along the 10 Freeway at 75702 Varner Road, between exits at Cook Washington streets. It has roughly the same capacity as Toyota Arena, home of the Inland Empire’s other hockey team, the Ontario Reign. That venue opened in 2008 as Citizens Business Bank Arena and has presented such headliners as Neil Diamond, Elton John and Leon Russell, Carrie Underwood and the “American Idol Live” tours.
“Our 11,000-seat concert capacity really gives us the ability to do any major tour that’s out on the road,” said Bolton. “We should be able to get any show that’s out there.”
For more information about the venue or upcoming performances and games, go to acrisurearena.com.