The obsession with playing in over-sized stadiums in Australia.

[Keays2myBeamas]

Playing AFL in front of empty stands has highlighted how crucial a role the atmosphere plays in the magnetism of live sport. The next generation of this country are turning to European Soccer, and part of the drawcard of these leagues are the atmospheres. More kids play soccer at U16 level than Football, League and Union combined. If the AFL wants to survive and thrive as a superior alternative for the next generation, it needs to think seriously about enhancing crowd atmosphere.

Generally speaking, in international sports, if your planned stadium is not going to be at at least 80% capacity, for 80% of events, you'd be insane to build.

If you do, the owners/tenants of the venue are left with 4 pretty major problems:
- You'll have overspent on the build budget, and the costs to maintain and run the stadium will exceed the revenue from ticket sales, leaving a big hole in the bottom line.
-Below capacity attendances result in a massively diluted atmosphere, which heavily reduces the perceived quality of events held at the stadium - both for the attendees and tv viewers. People are willing to pay far less to see sport in venue at 25% capacity than they are willing to pay to watch the same match in a sold out venue.
-To counter the excess supply and reduced demand, you have to reduce ticket prices, which reduces the "perceived value" of the event. Holding a ticket to a game no longer becomes an enviable status symbol, and people have even less desire to actually attend a game.
-Because of the low ticket price and low exclusivity, there is an increased percentage of casual and fringe fans attending relative to hardcore fans, which dilutes the atmosphere even further.

You're left with a negative feedback loop that's pretty hard to break.

These issues can cause some interesting decisions by poorly run organisations. During the early 2010s, Cricket Australia refused to sell ODI tickets for less than $100, because they didn't want the perceived exclusivity of attending international cricket to be compromised. They had no problem filling stadiums in the late 90s and early 2000s when the Australian ODI team was on, but they were left with 4-8k attendances in the early 2010s in stadiums that were only getting bigger (SCG/Adelaide/Perth). For too long, they refused to budge on the ticket prices and their crowd numbers suffered a lot more than they should have given the reduction in quality of the team. Unsurprisingly CA is absolutely strapped for cash to deal with coronavirus. Playing games at smaller, more intimate and elegant, character filled, sold out venues would have added to the experience in an age of soulless concrete and steel. They would have had better attendances and not had to compromise on ticket prices because of the increased value of the experience. Not to mention the venues are cheaper to lease.

The AFL runs a few games each year at small venues - but these are usually to promote the game in regional centres, and the desire to play low drawing games in smaller venues is a secondary consideration.

The issue is not that the MCG or Perth Stadium or the Adelaide Oval shouldn't exist - they should. The issue is that money should have been spent on venues with elegance and character like Victoria Park, Princes Park, and Whitten Oval, before building an additional soulless pieces of crap like Docklands. Extra toilet and food facilities is pretty a manageable undertaking. Cricket should absolutely not be at the Perth Stadium when the attendance wouldn't have filled the WACA. The SCG is too big. The Gabba is too big. ANZ is a joke. Metricon should be torn down and dumped in the ocean to create some more reef.

But what about the fan? What if they want to attend for $25. Too many would miss out!
I don't buy this argument at all - this only benefits fair-weather fans who detract from the atmosphere in any case. If you're an actual fan you buy a membership, or you buy your ticket early enough so you don't miss out. Should a concert be played in a quarter-filled MCG instead of Rod Laver Arena because some slow-to-buy fringe fans will miss out? All you're doing is reducing the quality of the concert. As much as the idea that any family can roll up to the ticket booth of the MCG and waltz in for a reasonable price for any match of the season is a nice utopia, it fundamentally hurts the quality of the product we produce, to the point where we're losing fans.

Clearly stadium size is not the only factor that dilutes the quality of the product - the number of teams and team location hurts as well. There's obviously too many teams. But a well run team can survive in a tough location if they have a small venue with lower costs. The Gold Coast and GWS would have done better in 10,000-15,000 seat boutique grounds, a small field size and a tight knit atmosphere akin to an English club ground. Metricon is a huge field and has about as much atmosphere as the moon. St Kilda/North/Footscray might be thriving a bit more if they played out of 20k Suburban grounds instead of Docklands.

The days of the suburban ground are not over. That's bullshit spoken by the type of people who enjoy going to Marvel Stadium.

 

[Roogal]

An interesting perspective. But consider that AFL was born from cricket clubs who wanted an alternate sport to keep their players fit during the Winter months, hence the game was spawned being played on cricket grounds (Which are oval shaped ... to the keen observers out there). I don't think that AFL would work on a rectangular shaped field as this was trialed with the AFLX a few years ago. I dispute your suggestion that ovals don't lend themselves to atmosphere, having attended the Western United FC playing in Ballarat at Mars Stadium which is a small capacity ground but there was certainly plenty of noise, passion and atmosphere from the 5000 spectators.

Could Australia perhaps adopt smaller ovals perhaps the size of those used in India which would bring crowds closer into the action? That's not out of the equation when stadia are redeveloped in the future. Further having a larger oval does lend itself to flexibility of being adapted and used for all sports where as the rectangular facilities are unable to be adapted back the other way without complex and expensive re-builds. Consider that you cannot play T20 cricket at Townsville's new $250 million, 25,000 capacity rugby stadium, conversely the oval field at Ballarat's $22 million, 12,000 capacity Mars Stadium hosts AFL, local cricket, A-League soccer and Super Rugby. Further, for a relatively modest $800,000 investment at that ground it could easily host night T20 games and have greater flexibility for scheduling AFL games.

When one considers the potential to use Perth's Optus Stadium and Adelaide's Oval as future Commonwealth or even as Olympic Games venues that can be adapted with little expense apart from laying down an athletics track as occurred at the MCG back in 1956 for the Olympics and in 2006 for the Comm Games, whereas the purpose built Olympic stadium at Homebush which was designed as a multi-purpose facility in Sydney is about to undergo an $800(+) million rebuild to re-configure it from its Olympic proportions to a smaller 70,000 capacity Rugby/Soccer only facility. Further if Brisbane gets the nod for the 2032 Olympics, Queenslander's will have to accept the same expense and post Olympic nightmare with what they are going to do with their stadium as what Sydney has had to deal with.

I don't think that Australia has an obsession with ovals as you say, but it comes down to practicality and what the venues in each location or city are most likely to be used for. In Victoria, SA, WA, TAS and the NT the two biggest field sports codes are undisputedly Cricket and Aussie Rules. That is likely not to change for any foreseeable future.

It's food for thought.

 

[ibd77]

During the Football Park (AAMI Stadium) era, I always wondered if Port could ever redevelop Alberton oval to a boutique 25-30k stadium and move away from West Lakes for its home games. We probably would have ended up in a better financial position then what the SANFL left us with the rancid stadium deal.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

You made a lot of good points but I want to address a couple of them.

The SCG is too big. The Gabba is too big.

Are they? The last two tests played at the SCG both attracted more than 30 000 for the first three days. The Gabba's test record of late has been pretty poor, but the last two tests were against Pakistan and Sri Lanka, countries that few people care about watching. By contrast, the Gabba consistently delivers excellent crowds for BBL, hitting 26-29k for all but one game this past summer, even as attendances were low in other cities. Maybe the Gabba does better for day-night cricket because of the heat during the day. Or maybe Queenslanders just have shorter attention spans.

I can see the value of a smaller venue in both cities, but who pays for North Sydney Oval or Allan Border Field to be upgraded to test standard? The state governments are already throwing a lot of money into the bigger venues. Or does Giants Stadium already meet test standard? That would be an ideal solution.

St Kilda/North/Footscray might be thriving a bit more if they played out of 20k Suburban grounds instead of Docklands.

Again, who pays? They can't all share one suburban stadium since their bases are in three very different areas. Will any of these stadia get the frequency of use needed to justify hundreds of millions in capital investment?