AT some point within Hampden tonight there is a chance the boss will meet The Boss.

Peter Dallas's job as the managing director of Hampden Park Ltd is to run what most of us know chiefly as the home of Scottish football. So what exactly does he do in the long summer months when the season's over? Twiddle his thumbs? He gives an "aye, that'll be right" laugh. In fact Dallas is about to have one of the most demanding nights of his year as Bruce Springsteen, aka "The Boss", stages a massive concert in the stadium this evening.

In the course of an interminable wait in the Hampden reception area last week – several hours frittered away as one of those Scottish Premier League meetings dragged on upstairs – it was incredible to see quite how many people pass through the front doors on an ordinary midweek afternoon. If they put a cash turnstile on the door Scottish football's ills would be solved overnight. Those of us who shuttle back and fore to Hampden over the course of a football season do not see the place as Dallas does.

Springsteen takes it over tonight and next week there will be two nights of Robbie Williams. Next month it's Bon Jovi. In the past, Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, AC/DC, U2, The Rolling Stones, George Michael, The Eagles, Take That, Eminem and Oasis have held centre stage. And, yes, they often do use the home and/or away dressing rooms even when, as for tonight's gig, the stage is on the opposite side of the pitch.

These Springsteen, Williams and Bon Jovi shows are estimated to be worth £5m to the Glasgow economy via hotels, restaurants, pubs, cafes, clubs and taxi companies etc. They make money for Hampden Park Ltd, too, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Scottish Football Association.

Concerts are only half the story. Hampden has a lecture theatre, and umpteen functions rooms and banqueting suites. It has just held a dental show attended by 2300 people. Even more than that sat exams there recently. For others, there have been school prom events or graduation parties. A wedding exhibition will be held soon, three members of the Tartan Army are getting married at Hampden in the coming weeks (not to each other). The final weekend of November is already fully booked for Christmas parties. Around 30,000 people pass through Hampden every year to attend the Scottish Football Museum. Others, some limping, come to the Sports Medicine Centre. "The common misconception is that Hampden hosts a few matches and not a lot in between," says Dallas "Nothing could be further from the truth. We're no different from other venues, we need to be generating income on a daily basis.

"People think funds come in to Hampden from external bodies. Hampden Park Ltd has to generate its own business, and the majority of that business comes through the football matches that we host at the stadium. Concerts are also a key part of that, and then we have catering and banqueting facilities.

"You have to remember that the main part of the South Stand was opened in 1999, a lot of the other areas of the stadium date back to the late '80s or early '90s so the maintenance costs of keeping the stadium in a fit condition for these major events needs finance, and we have to generate that."

Money was also needed for the recent £3m investment in the North Stand, which improved the concourse area and facilities. The ground's capacity remained at the 52,000 which, although a third of what it held back in its days as one of the world's biggest football bowls, is seen as adequate.

No two sets of fans are alike. The crowd for, say, an Old Firm game isn't quite the same as for Robbie Williams. Fewer stilettos, for a start. "Football fans have usually been here regularly and they know the stadium. With gigs it's a different demographic, different age groups, a lot more females. There have been gigs where the ladies far outnumber the guys. A lot of the girls won't have been to Hampden before so it's a different experience. For us there's nothing better than to hear the fans striking up the chorus of a song when they're leaving the stadium at the end of a concert. That tells us it's been a good night.

Between the start of the Olympic football last summer and the Scottish Cup final in May, the pitch was used 56 times for football. But things are about to change. Hosting the athletics and the closing ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games will mean Hampden closes its doors to football from November this year until January, 2015. Next season's Scottish Cup and League Cup semi-finals and finals, Scotland fixtures including the early Euro 2016 qualifiers, and Queen's Park's games, will all have to be held elsewhere. Ironically Ibrox and Celtic Park – which Hampden sometimes "beats" in bids to host concerts – have already both been offered to the SFA as alternatives.

For a while Hampden will be another place entirely. An IAAF-standard 400 metre running track will be constructed around the pitch and the entire centre of the stadium will be raised by 1.9m to accommodate it. The bottom eight rows of seats around the ground will be unusable, temporarily lowering capacity to around 44,000.

Dallas is evangelical about Hampden, proud of its versatility and his small team of staff who help deliver its events. But ultimately he knows it best as the rest of us do: as the cradle of Scottish football. Not always loved, but always there. "What gives me great pleasure is seeing mum, dad and the kids on the front steps before a big game, getting their photos taken. Some clubs get here more than others but Hampden, in one sense or another, has always been about success and failure. It's nice to have that souvenir.

"Families have come here for years. Generations of fathers have taken their sons, and those sons have taken their sons. I remember coming to Hampden myself for the first time as a kid, at night, you saw the floodlights and then came over the top of the terracing and saw the vibrancy of the expanse of green grass. There is something emotional about it all. The place is in a lot of people's hearts."