Less than two decades after Sydney hosted the Olympics, its sports infrastructure is back in the national consciousness. 
The New South Wales government has come in for heavy criticism over its plan to knock down and rebuild the Olympic Stadium (currently branded ANZ) in Sydney’s west and the Sydney Football Stadium (currently branded Allianz), which sits in the east alongside the Sydney Cricket Ground.
The cost? Somewhere above A$2 billion.
Suddenly, the media-sport-politics machine cranked up in earnest.
A debate beyond the field
Sydney Morning Herald columnist and sport aficionado Peter FitzSimons reported that his article criticising the decision elicited the strongest reaction to anything that he’d written in the paper over three decades. There followed a change.org petition and a welter of unfavourable publicity reaching well beyond Sydney.
Even the NSW opposition leader, Luke Foley, broke out of the state political freezer to press his criticisms on national radio.
This was, for Foley, a matter of west versus east, education and health versus big sport, and the state government pandering to its elite mates on the Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground Trust. Its trustees include the influential broadcaster Alan Jones and uber-conservative businessman Maurice Newman.
Sport Minister Stuart Ayres had, by then, rolled out the familiar justifications that Sydney was falling behind the likes of Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth in its big event infrastructure. This was not just a matter of civic pride, but of jobs in the event sector. And, in any case, Ayres claimed the cost was only 1% of planned five-year expenditure on health and education.
The sport-friendly local tabloid, The Daily Telegraph, editorially supported him with the unequivocal opinion:
Spending $2 billion on revamping our sports stadiums is a good thing.
Judging by the amplified negative response, this riposte was finding the going hard.
Is sport’s political power fading?
What does all this claim and counter-claim over public investment in infrastructure tell us about sport, politics and economics?
First, it appears that sport does not have quite the privileged place at the front of the public trough queue it once occupied.
Whereas once there would have been a great deal of flowery language about sport’s unchallenged place in Australian hearts, the justification for the funding priority given to two large enclosed sport spaces has been almost entirely economic.
In Australia, as elsewhere in the world (especially North America), cities have been drawn into a place-marketing competition in which private sport concerns demand public subsidies. If governments don’t stump up the cash through building facilities, offering tax incentives and other inducements, sport franchises and signature events threaten to relocate.
In Sydney’s case, one threat is that it may lose major events like the NRL Grand Final if it does not do what is expected of it by those who run the game. That many locals seem prepared to run that risk suggests that sport cannot simply appeal to its intrinsic worth as a substitute for reasoned argument.
But, if there is some well-founded scepticism about sport being unimpeachably good for the soul, it also seems that many people have become wary of the case that it is beneficial for the wallet.
The seemingly hard-headed world of sport event economics has been frequently exposed as a fantasy island of rubbery figures, optimistic projections and misleading extrapolations.
Further reading: For cities, hosting major sporting events is a double-edged sword
Building sport infrastructure has become enmeshed with all the other contentious projects that are currently underway in Sydney. The best known of these is the $17 billion (and rising) WestConnex road network expansion.
The Australian auditor-general has been highly critical of the cavalier way in which public funds were committed at the behest of governments and interest groups. Public transport advocates have bemoaned its lost opportunities.
The information-light argument that has been made for the Sydney stadium rebuilds has, it appears, a similar level of substance to WestConnex. Substituting “sport and jobs” for the “roads and jobs” mantra has been met with much cynicism, especially when more imaginative, lower-key ways of spending $2 billion on sport and other socially beneficial areas are being canvassed.
Building up suburban, community-based sport facilities, reducing junior sport registration costs, advancing school classroom renovation timetables and restoring the embattled technical and further education system have all been suggested as better ways of spending on the public good out of the proceeds of privatisation.
Working out who should benefit from public funding inevitably raises questions of need and privilege. The NSW Coalition government’s efforts to keep both sides of town happy across the east-west divide has left it uncomfortably astride the M4 motorway that it is widening in the name of WestConnex.
Sport stadium debates, like the contests they stage, can be unpredictable affairs. The fate of governments may stand or fall with the grandstands.
David Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
fix the scrums
Guest
But Fitzy has a point. The government needs to release more figures to present a strong business case. Surely that's not too much to ask. Its a lot of money.
Mosquito
Guest
Fitz's attempt at economics failed him this morning so he admitted defeat and went to a Herald economist who of course agreed with him. He at least now understands economic benefit from stadia upgrades and there will be this unending debate on different costs and benefits. If it means womens world cup, EPL games, big RL and RU games then as Infrastructure NSW said its better to tear down. But please not make it east vrs west...A lot less of "they built the Coliseum 1000 years ago and its still standing (sic) (and hosts 13K twice a year for a couple of hours) so why tear down Allianz" and I will be happy..
Crosscoder
Roar Guru
i don;t believe it, but I am in full agreement with Mosquito,on that point.
Crosscoder
Roar Guru
Who benefits from ANZ remaining unchanged Red B ?Who benefits from a run down SFS,whilst having updated stadiums of their own? Comments made by Shepherd in the past about retaining ANZ as oval, and your code putting in a couple of mill to ensure it remained able to handle the oval code,suggests the tin foil hat is doing OK. Added to the fact the SFS ironically will be built before the ANZ,and should a new Govt come in,ANZ may well end up having zero done. The irony is noted by the numbers of fans of your code here, who do not want any demolition work done on either.Really concerned about taxpayers money LO,only when it involvers other codes apparently..
Redb
Roar Guru
Whoa watch that tin foil hat Crosscoder...
Mosquito
Guest
That's a fairly loose crack to make about a person. However Fitz was an arrogant boofhead before he lost weight and gave up drinking and now he is just an insufferable preacher bore. He doesn't have the economic analysis skills to make a call on the need to upgrade Sydney stadium infrastructure but continues to preach to the uninitiated who view all spending outside their inner city NIMBY interests as a waste of money. Fitz - resume drinking to gain some humility.
Mike
Guest
Fitzsimons once charged $8,000 to host a childhood cancer fundraiser and then proceeded to drink himself blind drunk on the free red wine they reluctantly provided. And he's now asking what about the hospitals? What about the kids? Hypocrisy thy head wears a red towel!!!
Jack Russell
Roar Guru
The average Storm crowd at AAMI this year was 16k. Still plenty of room for growth.
Bill larkin
Guest
It's just cargo cult "if we build it they will come" nonsense. Go ahead and waste your money NSW as the rest of Australia laughs at your quarter filled stadiums.
Crosscoder
Roar Guru
Which will make no difference to the decision already made.People soon get on with life with other things to worry about. Its' the silent majority who decide in the end at election time. And no doubt many of the signatures came from people with no interest in sport, some no doubt AFL types as retaining ANZ as is means they can use it for semis.Shepherd is a crafty one
GWSINGAPORE
Guest
He still has 140 000 signatures on the petition. A record for that online survey organization.
Peter Phelps
Guest
That is not as silly a comment as you may think. You would have to think that starting from scratch, that planners could come up with a better layout and infrastructure plan than the mess that Sydney is today.
Peter Phelps
Guest
Not often but the capacity of Ammi Park is 30,000 and in 2017, the Storm had 20,500 members with an average home gate somewhere around 23,000. Won't take much growth for 30,000 to become a constraint
jamesb
Guest
Sydney is not going to host a future Olympic Games for at least another 50 years. In the meantime, if Australia was to host it again, other cities like Brisbane, Melbourne or Perth would be bidding for it.
Bigbaz
Guest
Yeh, Nar, you would have opposed the building of the SCG , and tell me why the arts have greater or lesser importance than sport. You seem like someone that would not build any sporting areas or arenas but build a heap of state of the art hospitals to house an unhealthy nation. Quite simply it makes more economic sense to rebuild rather than refurbish, and you need a touch of vision to build the SCG, MCG ,the brilliant race and golf courses that reside in our cities, some of the most liveable on the planet.
Marco
Guest
So, if the Tigers and Bulldogs play out of Parramatta who plays at ANZ? Souths and maybe the occasional Dragons game. Hardly enough to warrant knocking ANZ down. Same with Allianz, the Roosters seem intent on taking games out of Sydney. What other NRL teams will play there? Union will have some games in winter and soccer in the summer. But Allianz needs more than this. The NRL grand final will always be in the biggest market of Sydney, it is in the games best interests. Sydney will always get at least one origin game a year. Big soccer games and union games will always have a representation in Sydney. The city isn't about to suddenly lose these games just because of the stadium. Sports will always seek to showcase their games in different markets from time to time. Not much you can do about that. Too many questions not enough answers! Not Fitzy's biggest fan but I agree with him. This government is hiding something and the taxpayers are being taken for a ride.
Alan
Guest
A football stadium is hardly something a person of vision (let alone rebuilding an existing one) would waste any time on.
Sean
Guest
Best response so far.
Kangajets
Guest
I think just bulldozing the whole of Sydney and start again would be a good idea . Total shytole of a city .
Kangajets
Guest
16000 is good considering how bad the Melbourne Victory team are playing Victory crowds will be down to 10000 soon