By DAVID HAYWARD
THIS week the NSW Government will meeting to discuss an enormous decision that will dictate the health of future attendances for the rectangular sporting codes in Sydney.
As reported in The Weekend Australian, the NRL and FFA have been on the front foot in recent weeks pleading the Government to focus the spending on a ‘world class’ rectangular stadium at Homebush and a refurbished Allianz Stadium at Moore Park.
NRL attendances in Sydney have declined five per cent year on year since 2014. This is due to a combination of the following of the smaller Sydney clubs performing greater than the bigger Sydney clubs, non-fan friendly scheduling on Thursday and Friday nights and gradual increase in ticket prices.
Even with these factors in mind, it cannot be denied that the quality and location of Sydney rugby league venues make it highly unattractive for casual fans to attend matches, especially compared to sport in Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. When Walt Disney was planning Disneyland, he ensured its location was convenient.
The above issues for the NRL haven’t been helped by the lack of transport infrastructure spending in Sydney that has not kept up with population growth since the Olympics were held in 2000. This has resulted in the NSW Government embarking on a $30 billion-plus motorway investment program that will unlock congestion in the inner-west areas and a $30 billion-plus metro rail program that will provide connectivity to suburbs that have always had poor access to rapid transit, to address the critical nature of the city’s accessibility and liveability.
Unfortunately for the NRL, even with the above transport infrastructure, Sydney’s major stadiums will continue to have much poorer transport accessibility to the major population and employment areas compared to their counterparts in Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. As such the NRL should not expect an increase in much more than 10 to 15 per cent in attendances from the currently proposed stadium upgrades based on recent benchmarks set by stadium upgrades in other cities.
As it stands the NRL are encouraging the throwing of $1.6 billion worth of eggs in two baskets without producing a stadium closer to the CBD or mass rapid transit infrastructure for people to access more easily. This will only result in Sydney NRL attendances increasing by five to 10 per cent at best given only 50 per cent of Sydney matches are played at major stadiums.
If the NRL wants to achieve more than a 15 per cent increase in attendances from stadium upgrades alone, they need to improve their current thinking and demands to the NSW Government. It was disappointing to hear Todd Greenberg recently insist that $900 million is not enough to convert ANZ Stadium into a world class 70,000 capacity rectangular stadium. This is simply not true and represents a shameful disregard to the value of public money.
The truth is $900 million is enough to convert ANZ Stadium into a world-class rectangular facility. The answer simply lies with adopting the upgrade approach applied to Mercedes-Benz Arena in Stuttgart in 2011 which converted the oval configured 55,000 capacity stadium into a 61,000 rectangular stadium for 63 million Euros. Sure this was done without requiring a new roof and may be not considered a “world-class” stadium in the eyes of those in NRL headquarters but the point remains $900 million is enough.
The fact that seems to be lost on stadium designers is that ANZ already has approximately 25,000 seats fully under cover in perfect rectangular formation residing in the western stands, once the bottom tier is in position for oval events. Therefore the stadium upgrade simply needs the field to be set hard against the western stand oval configuration and have 50,000 seats built around the western stand in that formation to establish a rectangular stadium with capacity for 75,000 covered seats. Ignoring the cost-effective German stadium upgrade example in Stuttgart and adopting the bloated cost United States stadium examples Australia looks to emulate as the “world-class” standard, the cost of such an upgrade would be approximately $900 million at most. This is based on the most recent roofed stadiums built in Houston, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Dallas, Atlanta and Minneapolis which have averaged $18,000 per seat (AUD).
The added benefit to this approach is that the venue could remain open for much of the NRL seasons during construction with at least a 25,000 seat capacity, similar to how the MCG remained open during its redevelopment of 55,000 seated northern stand during 2003-2006 and as Mercedes-Benz Arena in Stuttgart did in 2010-2011.
Adding the cost of the brand-new Parramatta Stadium of $300 million, a $900 million Stadium Australia upgrade leaves approximately $400 million to upgrade the rest of the dilapidated stadiums across Sydney. Many, including the State Government, hold the view that spending more state money on suburban grounds is a waste of money and has cost Sydney having a “world-class” rectangular stadium in recent years. This sort of thinking is likely to result in the remaining $400 million being allocated on further gold plating ANZ Stadium or a brand-new reduced capacity Allianz Stadium.
