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I am just old enough that I managed to catch a few AFL games at the old suburban grounds before they stopped hosting league games.
Many of us remember fondly places like Windy Hill, the Western Oval, Arden Street or Princes Park. My own favourite footy memory remains a game at Victoria Park in 1993, where a young North Melbourne side on the verge of a dominant era flogged the Pies by 83 points.
Twenty years of the league’s ground rationalisation policy means this is now a bygone era.
There are now just two places to watch footy in Melbourne – the MCG and at the Dockland (now on its third corporate-branded name, Etihad Stadium). These are fully seated, modern facilities which sit right next to major railway stations.
They are family-friendly, safe, comfortable and can usually accommodate all the people who want to turn up and see a game. While sometimes we all can get nostalgic for the suburban grounds of old, it is hard to argue that this policy hasn’t been a splendid success.
But now we hear reports that the AFL is considering resurrecting the idea of the old suburban ground. Of course, the league prefers the name “boutique” – in real estate parlance a byword for “small” – to describe this new venue in Melbourne seating 20,000 spectators.
Melbourne of course doesn’t need another AFL stadium. The MCG and Docklands can comfortably accommodate the existing Melbourne-based clubs. This is based on the scheduling of league matches since 2005, when the last suburban ground in Princes Park hosted its final game.
This proposal is certainly not created out of concern for the viewing public. Indeed, 26,000 people showed up to the North Melbourne versus Fremantle game in Round 22 last year – more than would fit in the proposed boutique stadium, which is supposed to host such games.
Sure, the stadium’s ticketing policy leaves the general admission plebs to sit up on Level 3 while TV viewers are confronted with rows of empty seats on Level 1, but the atmosphere at these game is still pretty good. You certainly don’t sit there watching the game thinking that it would be a more enjoyable experience if only the stadium were a little smaller…
Instead, the drive for a new stadium is apparently being driven by commercial considerations. The AFL, after 13 seasons of footy there, has apparently realised that the clubs – not just the weaker Melbourne-based clubs, but even heavyweights like Carlton – are getting a raw deal at Docklands.
I can’t blame the stadium’s owners, a consortia of five superannuation funds, for driving a hard bargain. It’s our retirement savings they are playing with, and our super has been going backwards in recent times enough as it is.
The owners have until March 2025 to extract maximum value out of the asset before their contract with the AFL obliges to transfer ownership of it to the AFL for the princely sum of $1.
The clubs have to play games there owing to the AFL’s contract with the venue and a lack of alternatives. It is not hard to see why the weaker Melbourne-based clubs have lacked any bargaining power in striking deals with the stadium.
If the AFL wants to buy the stadium early, as it has indicated, there would have to be a pretty hefty price tag. The seller would be looking to be paid out the full value of its rights to the profit generated by the stadium until its scheduled handover to the AFL.
The talk by the AFL of developing a “boutique” venue is most likely commercial bluff to see if the asking price for Docklands can be driven down, under the threat of playing the less commercially lucrative games there.
As negotiating tactics go I suspect that this is a pretty transparently poor one, and the owners of Docklands are not going to fall for it. The number being thrown around for the construction of a new stadium is in the order of $150 million.
At best any new stadium would not be ready until the 2015 season, giving the AFL a decade before it ends up owning Docklands anyway and no longer has a need for a third stadium. Even if the AFL could convince the state or federal government to contribute to a new stadium, somehow I don’t think the numbers are going to stack up.
The AFL would be much better off saving its money and better funding the clubs, particularly those which are struggling under the current stadium deal and who suffer further financial disadvantage due to the league’s lopsided scheduling of matches.
That Punt Road Oval is being thrown up as possible site should be enough to make it clear that talk of a “boutique” stadium is a massive boondoggle. Anyone who has even a basic knowledge of Melbourne knows it makes no sense to build a new stadium right next to Australia’s largest, in a location wedged right up against one of Melbourne’s busiest roads.
That’s why Richmond stopped playing games there in 1964 and moved to its bigger, better neighbour, the MCG. The other alternative, Princes Park, was decommissioned as an AFL venue in 2005 for good reason – crumbling grandstands and poor access to public transport being among them.
If the AFL really thinks it has money burning a hole in its pocket, it could throw $15 million to a cricket ground at Junction Oval. This would free up the MCG for footy in March, enable the real footy season to start earlier, and allow the AFL to ditch its unloved pre-season competition.
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