As music fans snap up tickets for BTS’s two-night stop at Sun Bowl Stadium this May and a tour stop featuring Post Malone and Jelly Roll days later, the University of Texas at El Paso’s landmark stadium is drawing some of the biggest names in music.
The concerts follow two sold-out Coldplay performances last June. They also come less than two years after UTEP leaders asked El Paso County to take a $99 million bond proposal to voters to upgrade the stadium — a request county commissioners declined.
UTEP President Heather Wilson recently told El Paso Matters that the university continues to look for ways to improve the stadium using existing resources, though she did not say whether the university plans to renew its request for public funding.
“We want to do everything we can with what we have, and we’re always looking for opportunities to make it even better,” Wilson said. “We want El Paso and the Sun Bowl (Stadium) to be a must stop, and not just a gas stop.”
The proposed renovation plan — dubbed Sun Bowl Uplift — included upgrades to electrical systems, improved access for large production trucks and a drivable field cover system. Plans also called for improvements to restrooms, concessions, food service areas and other amenities aimed at enhancing the experience for fans and performers, according to the university’s project website.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: UTEP asks county for $99 million bond issue for Sun Bowl Stadium upgrades
These are requirements concert producers and promoters take into account when selecting their venue stops, the university said.
El Paso County Commissioner David Stout said the recent bookings reinforce his view that the county made the right decision.
“These bookings are great,” said Stout, who opposed the stadium upgrade proposal, saying the county planned carefully to address its needs and did not have the capacity to address UTEP’s request.
LEARN MORE: UTEP asks county for $99 million bond issue for Sun Bowl Stadium upgrades
Stout said the county had carefully evaluated its financial capacity when UTEP made the request and determined it could not take on the additional debt.
“At $100 million, it would have been another penny on the tax rate,” Stout said. “Our focus was, and still is, to pursue our identified priorities and execute on time and on budget.”
The stadium opened Sept. 21, 1963, as the home of the Texas Western Miners football team. The school changed its name to the University of Texas at El Paso in 1967.
Sun Bowl Stadium initially had a capacity of 30,000 attendees until an expansion 19 years later increased capacity to 52,000 people. In 2020, club seats and loge boxes were added to the stadium, reducing its overall capacity to about 46,000.
The University of Texas System is unable to pay for the renovations needed for the Sun Bowl, as Texas law “doesn’t allow public university funds to be used on athletic or auxiliary functions, including event venues like the Sun Bowl,” according to the university’s project website.
In explaining its request for county assistance, UTEP said the scale of the Sun Bowl project exceeded what the university believed it could raise through private donors or athletics revenue alone.
“While UTEP programs have benefited from record fundraising this past year, the scale of this project far exceeds what we believe our donor capacity is, and a partnership with the county is the most viable option,” the university’s project website said.
UTEP estimated the total cost of the upgrades at $196 million, but didn’t outline how it planned to raise the difference had the bond been taken to and approved by voters.
Tom Fullerton, a UTEP economics professor, believes the upgrades probably would have made it easier to attract top-tier acts such as Coldplay and BTS.
“Events such as BTS and Comic Con help the sector continue to attract new investment,” Fullerton said. Comic Con is held at the city’s Judson F. Williams Convention Center in Downtown.
“The UTEP Border Region Modeling Project forecasts hotel sector sales revenues to increase to $316.4 million in 2026 with a 68.3% occupancy rate and the average room rate rising to $106.95 per night,” he said.
Two years ago, UTEP distributed printed material to supporters and donors that claimed Sun Bowl upgrades could generate $82 million in local tax revenue for El Paso County and have a $2.06 billion economic impact from tourism, retention and new retail spending over 30 years.
The information was based on an analysis from UTEP’s Hunt Institute for Global Competitiveness.
The economic impact is driven by an assumption that the stadium would attract three additional “A-level” events per year. The documents stated that revenues from special events in the improved facility would cover the county’s bond repayment and could have generated $4.1 million annually in additional tax revenue.
READ MORE: Global K-pop superstars BTS announce Sun Bowl Stadium concerts in El Paso for 2026 tour
While the British rock band Coldplay came to town after commissioners voted down UTEP’s proposal, Wilson said that the band’s willingness to perform in El Paso showed the possibilities for the Sun Bowl.
“Coldplay was transformative,” Wilson said. “It started to put El Paso on the map showing that we can do very large, very complex events.”
Jim Ward, a musician from El Paso, is friends with the band’s lead singer, Chris Martin. Although El Pasoans assumed Ward played a major role in getting Martin to visit, Ward said that wasn’t the case. But he did allow that he bugged Martin multiple times to visit El Paso.
“The way I imagine it is that, their promotion said, ‘Here’s a list of cities’ or ‘Here, we’re thinking about going here,’ and they’re, like, ‘Yeah, we would love to go there, so maybe Jim will shut up,’” Ward said. “Anytime I can kind of get my friends to see my community either on a day off or play in a show here, then I love it.”
Coldplay attracted nearly 90,000 spectators and generated roughly $35 million for El Paso during their two-night stay, making a huge impact on hotels and other businesses, according to a UTEP study.
“I was there both nights,” Ward said. “I think it went really great.”
Prior to Coldplay, Sun Bowl Stadium last hosted RBD, the hit Mexican pop rock group, in 2023, the legendary rock band Guns N’ Roses in 2017 and British-Irish pop boy band One Direction in 2014.
The university has put money into stadium renovations, although it declined to say how much, for the past decade. In an 2024 opinion piece published in El Paso Matters, UTEP’s Jim Senter, vice president and director of athletics, put that figure at $20 million.
Wilson said UTEP is doing what it can to bring in bigger acts with existing facilities. As for additional big acts, Wilson said the university’s special events team continues to work to bring in big acts from big name concerts to the always popular monster truck shows.
“That’s true for the university as a whole, and that’s true for the events we want to bring here to make it even better to live in El Paso,” Wilson said.
El Paso Matters reporter Daniel Perez contributed to this story.
Michelle James Thorpe, a senior journalism student at the University of Texas at Austin, is a contributing writer for El Paso Matters as part of a capstone course this semester.
The post UTEP’s Sun Bowl Stadium draws major concerts as debate over funding upgrades lingers appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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