A closer concert experience

Sixty thousand fans are staring at a stage. In just 90 seconds, a 120-foot bridge extends over the crowd, and Ed Sheeran walks into the middle of them. No video screens. No distance. Just the artist and the audience, connected by a feat of engineering that, only months earlier, existed only as a vision.

“Ed wanted to perform on a secondary stage in the middle of the audience, without a traditional fixed runway dividing them,” says Jeremy Lloyd, Design Consultant at Wonder Works, the production design consultancy behind Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour. “The challenge was engineering that concept for a modern global stadium tour.” To turn that vision into reality, Wonder Works reached out to Show Canada, a Montreal-based design-build engineering firm with over 25 years of experience delivering complex automated stage systems for some of the world's most demanding productions.

Conceiving the stage bridge system

Founded in 1999 by its President and CEO Jean Labadie, Show Canada merges engineering precision with entertainment industry creativity. The company offers turnkey design, engineering, manufacturing, and installation services across virtually every corner of the entertainment industry, including architectural installations, theatrical touring, Olympic ceremonies, and large-scale venues. The Loop Tour would prove to be among the most demanding of all.

“Ed's idea was about getting closer to the people,” says Davide Monastero, Director of Electrical and Automation at Show Canada. “During specific songs, he wanted to leave the main stage and perform in the middle of the crowd. The bridge was the means to make that happen, and it was both thrilling and a bit daunting.”

Show Canada's answer was the ‘Tape Deck,’ named for its resemblance to the Loop Tour's cassette-inspired visual identity. The integrated system combines a 120-foot retractable cantilever bridge built across seven sections, ten scissor lifts, and two automated stage traps. The bridge extends from the main stage to a secondary performance platform at the center of the venue, with the lifts and traps managing the show flow around its movement.

Seven months to showtime

Ed Sheeran was set to open the Loop Tour in New Zealand in January 2026, which meant Show Canada had seven months to design, manufacture, and deliver one of the most ambitious stage automation systems ever built for a touring production. “The first show date was set and couldn't be missed,” says Martine Jobin, Project Manager at Show Canada. “The equipment also had to travel by boat, which is a long transit time. There was no buffer for manufacturing delays or rework. It had to ship by a specific date or we wouldn't make it.” The pressure was felt from the moment the contract was on the table.

The challenge, however, wasn't just in the timeline. The system had to survive a multi-year global stadium run of the kind only a handful of artists in the world can sustain, across multiple climates, safety jurisdictions, and logistical realities that change from country to country. “This project brought together challenges we had faced individually on other productions: working outdoors, building for a touring schedule, designing for fast assembly and disassembly,” Monastero says. “This was the first time they all came together in one system.” Delivering all of that, within seven months, demanded an automation platform that could keep pace.

The right platform

With a compressed schedule and a highly complex motion system to deliver, Show Canada had little appetite for technology risk. The company turned to Beckhoff, a platform it had used successfully across previous stage automation projects. “While a massive tour relies on a mix of lighting, video, and audio, for us, motion is the defining element. It's pretty much the only thing we do,” says William Cope, Head of System Design at Show Canada. “We needed a platform we could trust to handle multi-axis motion reliably, night after night.”

Just as importantly, Beckhoff's open architecture gave the team the flexibility to integrate third-party induction motors and drives over EtherCAT without integration challenges. This was a critical requirement for a system built around specialized touring components. “Beckhoff is not constraining us to buy everything from Beckhoff,” Cope says. “That's not true for every automation supplier, and it matters when you need third-party components to work seamlessly within the same architecture.”

The choice of Beckhoff was further reinforced by the Loop Tour's operator console partner, XM Automation, which was already working with Beckhoff code. With both teams on the same platform, Show Canada could hit the ground running on a timeline that had no room for integration surprises. “It was a no-brainer,” Cope says, adding that this extended to the support relationship. "If we have a question or a problem, the Beckhoff team is always there to pick up the phone or reply to an email.” Monastero agrees: "We have a pleasant experience every time we work on a project with Beckhoff. From quotation to technical support to delivery, we are very happy."

Engineering Ed’s vision

Space is at a premium on any touring rig, and the bridge systems’s control cabinets were no exception. Show Canada chose the Beckhoff C6015 ultra-compact Industrial PC as the system's brain, small enough to fit the physical constraints of the cabinet without compromising on processing power. “Bringing something as small as possible but incredibly powerful was exactly what we needed,” Cope says, explaining that the system runs TwinCAT with EtherCAT handling communication across every component of the rig.

TwinCAT 3 Motion (NC/PTP) orchestrates axis sequencing across the bridge and lift systems, while a CU1128 EtherCAT junction keeps the network resilient across cabinets and field devices. If a single cable is unplugged during load-in, the rest of the system stays online. Third-party induction motors and drives interface over EtherCAT alongside Beckhoff EtherCAT terminals, keeping the architecture open to the components Show Canada already works with.

Safety, however, was the design priority that shaped everything else. The bridge system is a modular machine, and its sections are not always physically connected during assembly. TwinSAFE terminals handle distributed safety communication across those sections, allowing crews to work across the machine simultaneously rather than waiting for full assembly before powering up. “That made it much faster for the crew to build,” Cope says. The TwinCAT HMI adds a further layer of practicality for touring life, giving crew a role-based, logged safety override that includes automatic timeouts for commissioning and maintenance outside live performance. This lets them resolve an interlock condition during setup without bringing the show to a halt.

Built to perform, night after night

For a system that assembles and disassembles multiple times a week, the ability to diagnose problems quickly on a stadium floor matters as much as performance. One of the most valuable tools in the crew's hands was the EtherCAT diagnostic page. “If they plug in a communication cable, they can go to that page and see in real time whether they have communication to each module,” Cope says, explaining that instead of tracing faults manually through daisy-chained connections, technicians could pinpoint problems instantly, even in the middle of a stadium load-in.

“If there's a bad cable, you can see the dropped frames immediately. I didn't expect that to be a game changer, but it has done a lot for troubleshooting. In fact, a lot of the crew told me they wished they also had that kind of visualization for lighting rigs.” This diagnostic advantage quickly showed up in day-to-day execution. Load-in times dropped from 24 hours at the first show to between 12 and 14 hours after the opening run, and strike time came down to approximately six hours.

“Projects like the Loop Tour showcase the world-class engineering talent we have here in Canada. We're incredibly proud to support a Montreal-based company delivering one of the most sophisticated stage automation systems ever built for a global concert tour. Beckhoff's role is to provide an open automation platform that enables innovators like Show Canada to focus on pushing the boundaries of what's possible,” says Ted Sarazin, Regional Manager at Beckhoff Automation Canada.

Beyond operational efficiency, the Tape Deck's engineering achievement has drawn wider attention in the tour's first year. The system has since been submitted for consideration by the Institution of Structural Engineers and the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering. For Jobin, however, the most meaningful measure of success came much earlier. “The look on Ed Sheeran's face when he saw the bridge for the first time was worth every effort put into the project.”