“Not Everyone’s Gonna Like It”: Hillsong Buys a Legendary Concert Hall for $23 Million

• Hillsong Church bought Melbourne’s Festival Hall for $23 million
• The roughly 5,000-seat venue once hosted The Beatles
• The building was heritage-listed in 2018
• Musicians questioned the church’s tax-exempt status after the deal

Hillsong Church bought Melbourne’s Festival Hall for $23 million, ABC’s triple j reported on 26 October 2020, taking over one of the best-known live music venues in Australia. The hall holds about 5,000 people and has a long place in the city’s music history: The Beatles played there in 1964, and it later hosted Oasis, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins, Lorde, The xx and Queens of the Stone Age among many others. It was given permanent heritage protection in 2018.

Hillsong’s leaders knew the purchase would be controversial. Founder Brian Houston said: “Not everyone’s gonna like it, I’ll tell ya now. Hillsong Church having such a significant building of Melbourne, not everyone’s gonna like it.”

Hillsong pastor Tim Douglass sought to reassure the public that the building would remain open to the wider city. “It has served the people of this city in different events over the years and it’s going to continue to do that,” he said.

The reaction in Melbourne’s music community was mixed. Some questioned how a church with enough money to buy a $23 million venue could justify continuing to enjoy tax-exempt status, a debate that follows large churches wherever they expand into prime real estate.

For Jamaica, the story touches on a familiar tension. Large, fast-growing churches here and among the diaspora increasingly look for big auditoriums, former cinemas and event spaces rather than traditional church buildings. When a church buys a public landmark, it gains room to grow but also takes on public expectations about access, heritage and fairness in the tax system. Congregations weighing a major purchase would do well to think about those questions before, not after, they sign.

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