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Quite a stretch to actually label any of those grounds stadiums, really they're not much more than suburban ovals with slightly better facilities.
Why do WA and SA only have one AFL stadium each?
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Quite a stretch to actually label any of those grounds stadiums, really they're not much more than suburban ovals with slightly better facilities.
Taylor
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The AFL hasn't sought to prop up a fledgling club in it's heartland or new markets with stadiums within SA or WA. Both Fremantle and Port Adelaide exist first and foremost to prevent West Coast and Adelaide becoming too strong from all the local state talent only having the one team, and one focus for sponsor deals paying players externally, to go back to after the draft elsewhere.
I'm so confused about the QLD example. Brisbane and Gold Coast are completely different cities, why would they share a stadium?
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Is this the women's team?
We don't have billionaire team owners who can build us separate home stadiums.
It's 1.5 times harder for NSW/Qld/SA teams to win the premiership than Vic and 2 times harder for WA teams to win given the distance.
The AFL made a lot of progress in its quest to become a national league between the late 90s and late 2000s. Since then, it has lurched back to being more Victorian centric since Gil has been in charge.
Agree with this 110%. More Perth and Adelaide teams should have brought in during the 80s and 90s (it's too late now) to make the league fairer. The current arrangement of WA/SA teams travelling every second weekend is unfair when you have teams like Richmond getting 5 consecutive games at the MCG and hardly leaving Melbourne.
It's 1.5 times harder for NSW/Qld/SA teams to win the premiership than Vic and 2 times harder for WA teams to win given the distance.
The AFL made a lot of progress in its quest to become a national league between the late 90s and late 2000s. Since then, it has lurched back to being more Victorian centric since Gil has been in charge.
So firstly there's obvious geographical differences. WA and SA populace are very strongly concentrated into one moderately sized capital city, and those state governments therefore have a single centrally located major stadium for all big events and only modestly sized secondary rectangular venues. That's good efficient policy for those places.
Compared to those states, Queensland is far more decentralised both across the southeast and with major populations further north. The government there supports major regional venues and secondary city events. Sydney, meanwhile, is an enormous city it takes ages to cross, and the Swans and GWS are in very different geographical locations. In theory, Olympic Park is supposed to be much easier to get to for people in half the city than the SCG. The NRL has a bunch of suburban teams based in the outer reaches of the city like Manly, Penrith and Cronulla and several based around the geographic centre at Parramatta. Sydney's like that, it's huge and spread out and transport sucks.
Victoria meanwhile has a more SA and WA style centralised stadium policy for Melbourne, helped by there never being outer suburban clubs in the VFL equivalent to the likes of Penrith and Cronulla. Unlike the NSWRL expansion, there were never Dandenong, Werribbee or Frankston teams in the VFL with fans concentrated away from the centre, instead there were inner city teams whose fanbases flared out along the rail lines while those outer suburbs had smaller clubs marginalised into the VFA.
The other thing though is the AFL owns Docklands and it helps them specifically as a wedge against the MCC Trust and State government having too much power over them.
The ACT has an AFL-standard venue because why wouldn't the ACT have a venue? We're the damn capital, we have our own territory government, and they pay to bring sport here for us to watch. Not sure how that's relevant to anything here.
Similarly, why wouldn't the two biggest cities in Tasmania each have a stadium suitable to hosting their primary sport with a crowd watching? Among all states, Hobart is the smallest share of its total state population.
Anyway.
The other thing you're probably missing is that every club is a tenant of their home stadia, nobody owns or has a stadium to themselves. That's not surprising, stadia are expensive and a single team stadium is low-utilisation and pretty wasteful as a taxpayer asset. Governments want to get more use out of them.
The Vic teams obviously have all their competing interests and the AFL and MCC interests hanging over them.
The Swans and Lions are co-tenants with cricket which dictates the centre square be a cricket pitch and causes off season issues. They can't train there until nearly the start of the AFL season, and in 2017 forced the AFLW Lions to host a grand final at Carrara. The Swans also sometimes share with the NRL or even rugby union.
The Giants share their primary ground with the Royal Easter Show which takes it up for a month or more of the year, and in summer there's a Big Bash team there as well.
The Suns and Geelong are the closest thing in the league to this hypothetical model of single-tenant venues with a club in nearly full control over a stadium nobody else plays at. The city council in each case gives them good financial terms, and they get a high proportion of total revenue there. The Suns even control pourage rights which is rare and big for a club. Why Geelong and Gold Coast? They're the two non-capital teams for starters. Being regional cities, not state capitals, there aren't so many competing demands and high level government stadium policies operating there.
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mcgarnacle
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* this sharing home grounds s**t! I suggest WCE & Flagmantle, and Adelaide & Port, set up stadiums like racing club and Independiente in Argentina, and Dundee & Dundee United in Scotland!!
Subi Oval now is community open space, having no external fence and just a few park benches around the grass playing field area. It resembles the old Brunswick Street Oval in Fitzroy, minus even the vestigal historic grandstand. It can never be used as an AFL ground again. WACA would be the most likely bail out ground but even that would not be close to adequate for an Eagles/ Dockers size crowd. Games in front of crowds up to 10,000 could be played at any of the WAFL venues, but with nothing like the facilities people attending AFL games have come to regard as essentials.
As to the OP, a new facility able to accommodate at least 50,000 would have to be built in each of Perth and Adelaide if the Dockers and Port were to insist on not only having their own stadium but being able to use it for home finals. Neither State Government nor the AFL are likely to consider the expenses, running to hundreds of millions of dollars, to be a worthwhile use of their funds. Neither club has any hope whatsoever of otherwise attracting the necessary funding. A shared project like the apartment/ sporting facility developments at Claremont Oval and currently underway at East Fremantle Oval is not viable in a stadium of the required scale.
Are you serious?
OP needs to look at some maps and population stats.
Hobart, Launceston, Alice Springs, Darwin, Townsville and Cairns all have stadiums because they are all minimum 2.5 hours from any other stadium. And they're all smaller than Princess Park.
AFL also doesn't exist in a vacuum, so many stadiums also exist for cricket.
They've recently upgraded a stadium in Albury. Wodonga is a different city, but it would be ridiculous to put one there.
Hobart, Launceston, Alice Springs, Darwin, Townsville and Cairns all have stadiums because they are all minimum 2.5 hours from any other stadium. And they're all smaller than Princess Park.
AFL also doesn't exist in a vacuum, so many stadiums also exist for cricket.
They've recently upgraded a stadium in Albury. Wodonga is a different city, but it would be ridiculous to put one there.
More clear “vicco bias”
Can't believe nobody mentioned Kalgoorlie.
mcgarnacle
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No home for the tribe. Generic and homogenous. For these clubs in Perth, Adelaide, and Melbourne, supporters are basically supporting the same thing, wearing different colours.
To get to the Gold Coast from Brisbane is almost equivalent to going to Geelong. Source: have done both, a lot.
Yeah but we play 22 games a year. Soccer sides all play in excess of 40. American sports are another step up further.
Would still be a more attractive destination than North Melbourne.
In all seriousness, a second major stadium here would be a huge waste of money and resources. I'd imagine it's the same for Adelaide.
Crowd numbers wouldn't change. No one, and I mean literally no one in Perth is asking for this either. Again I assume the people of Adelaide are of a similar mindset.
Brisbane/GC are different cities, Western Sydney is over an hours drive from Sydney CBD. That's Perth metro to all the closest wheatbelt towns by our geography. Tassie has two stadiums on opposite sides of the island, with a bunch of wilderness inbetween. Darwin and Alice Springs...I don't need to explain this one.
Crowd numbers wouldn't change. No one, and I mean literally no one in Perth is asking for this either. Again I assume the people of Adelaide are of a similar mindset.
Brisbane/GC are different cities, Western Sydney is over an hours drive from Sydney CBD. That's Perth metro to all the closest wheatbelt towns by our geography. Tassie has two stadiums on opposite sides of the island, with a bunch of wilderness inbetween. Darwin and Alice Springs...I don't need to explain this one.
Exactly.
And they cost 100s of millions of dollars to construct.
Adelaide and Perth have several other stadiums that would be equal to the two in Tasmania.
So to answer the OPs quetion. Its because there is no actual need for a second super stadium in Perth or Adelaide.
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As someone who had the misfortune of standing and watching games at suburban Vic grounds last century, my opinion differs. The MCG and Docklands stadiums are world class in comparison to what we'd face if every team had their own home ground.
You would end up with two permadrip clubs.
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