It’s been nearly two years since the monsters rolled into southern Ontario. Long gone are the days when the SkyDome in downtown Toronto would host Monster Jam events on it’s massive field. Seems that days of trucking dirt into the stadium for a couple shows on the weekend interfered with the big-money concerts vying for a place on the schedule.
Then last year the First Ontario Centre in Hamilton was closed for a major renovation project. Now that the facility has re-opened as the TD Coliseum it played host to 4 shows as part of the Monster Jam Freestyle Mania tour last weekend. And on Saturday night, the place was packed!
Compared to independent monster truck shows at places like the Markham Agricultural Fair north of Toronto, Monster Jam has grown and evolved so much over the past 20 years. Under the stewardship of Feld Entertainment, which also operates Supercross motorcycle racing and Disney on Ice productions, Monster Jam has taken that most rural of motorsports and made it appeal to urban audiences.
Monster truck shows used to be about destruction—crushing cars and wrecking RVs were mainstays of the sport through the ’80s and ’90s. But today’s monster truck shows are more like precision driving displays, akin to stunt drivers in Hollywood movies. The drivers can put these 12,000 lbs trucks up on 2 wheels and balance like a gyroscope. It’s actually very impressive.
The trucks fall into a couple of categories. There’s the ‘classics’ like Grave Digger that have been around longer than Monster Jam and have the biggest fan-base. Then there’s corporate trucks, like the JCB Digatron in its distinctive yellow paint, it resembles a piece of JCB construction equipment; that must pay some bills at Feld!
But the best of the bunch have to be the caricature trucks—the outrageous ones not based on any production vehicle (past, present, or future) but rather, are cartoonish exaggerations. There’s Megalodon, a four-wheeled great white shark, that emerged from the oceans back in 2017. A much older caricature truck is El Toro Loco, that debuted in 2001. It’s still go the recognizable body of a pickup truck but with a bull’s head up front. It even snorts steam out of it’s nostrils, like an old Looney Tunes cartoon.
Three out of the eight drivers at the Monster Jam event in Hamilton were female—including winner of the freestyle competition Brianna Mahon. She was the only driver to successfully attempt a backflip, which is just an amazing stunt in such a large vehicle.
Maybe a little too stereotypical, female drivers sometimes get special trucks designed to appeal the the little girls in the audience. For example, the incredibly creative Sparkle Smash monster truck. This vehicle started out as a 1:43 toy truck, but proved so popular that Feld commissioned a full-size version for competition. A pastel pink, purple, and blue unicorn, Sparke Smash shoots pink confetti out of her magical golden horn when landing a massive stunt. How can anyone not love monster trucks!
Gigantic, outrageous, call them whatever you want. The crowd in Hamilton loved every minute of Monster Jam. Fan-favourite Grave Digger was announced as the overall winner of the night’s competition, using the combined scores from all the events including racing, two-wheel skills, and freestyle. It was a big win.
For the promoter and the arena, it was also a big win. TD Coliseum has roughly a 17,000 seat capacity for Monster Jam events—the first 10 rows of seats are removed for safety. Even at only 85% capacity, those $50 average tickets generate somewhere between $700K to $1.3M per show. With four shows between Friday and Sunday, a $5M weekend box-office is not an unrealistic estimate. And that’s before the popcorn and trucker hats.
When the event was over, the Canadian crowed poured onto the sidewalks, in the orderly way only they can. Such a diverse crowd based on age, ethnicity and gender, Feld Entertainment really has found that sweet spot marketing their shows to the masses while still focused on kids.
Out in the parking lot at the Downtown Hamilton Mosque, an eerie green light under the lifted GMC pickup truck made it pretty easy to figure out just which monster truck the overgrown kids in Section 112 were cheering for.
Just saw an ad for Monster Jam in Winnipeg and was thinking I should probably take Sid next year!
So much fun. But the local ‘state fair’ type shows are OK too. Just not on the same level.