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Opinion
It seems to be the $750 million question holding back the AFL from officially confirming that its 19th licence will be heading to the Apple Isle.
The AFL has made it clear that the Tasmanian government must build a new stadium in Hobart to secure their long-awaited entry to the competition. There has been much debate within the AFL and general sporting community about whether this project should go ahead since its announcement in 2021.
A decision is unlikely to be made until the federal budget is delivered in May to determine how much funding will be given, if at all, to the Macquarie Point project. Is it the necessity that it’s made out to be by the Tasmanian government or are there other alternatives that would work better for Tasmania and other Australian sporting leagues?
In its current existence, Bellerive Oval doesn’t appear to be able to expand its seating capacity. Its proximity to nearby streets particularly towards the Church Rd standing area makes it incredibly unlikely that they could expand the David Boon Stand further around the wing or build a completely new stand. With the lack of space to expand the stadium, it does make sense that if Tasmania wants to keep up with other states in terms of attracting sporting events, particularly within its capital city of Hobart, investing in building a stadium would help that cause immensely.
There have been various examples of smaller cities in Australia being able to hold sporting events. The T20 Cricket World Cup in 2022 was held in Geelong’s Kardinia Park and so to will the upcoming Commonwealth Games in 2026, while Townsville’s Queensland Country Bank Stadium has been able to host a State of Origin game in 2021 and will be an included venue of the 2032 Olympics. This shows the drawing effect that stadiums such as these can have which is particularly important for its surrounding regions.
The Tasmanian government will hope that the proposed Macquarie Point stadium will have a similar effect.
Building a new stadium would also undoubtedly make other sporting codes give some consideration to having games played at the new stadium or even the potential to include a Tasmanian team in their competition. The most likely avenue for expansion within the sporting codes for a Tasmanian team outside of the AFL would be soccer. Given that the A-League is likely to expand to 16 teams by 2025/26, having the ability to play in a 23,000-seater state-of-the-art stadium within the Hobart CBD certainly has the potential to help bolster any Tasmanian bid to have a team in the A-League or at the very least make Danny Townsend and the APL take a closer look into the potential of a Tasmanian team entering the competition.
Gillon McLachlan (Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
However, its ability to be used for other sports has been called into question in recent weeks, in particular for cricket. The CEO of Cricket Tasmania Dominic Baker said in regards to the stadium and its roof that “The current (International Cricket Council) conditions are that you can’t play Test cricket under a fixed roof, that’s the current conditions, it’s pretty clearly outlined”.
This certainly narrows the scope of usage given the reliance within its business case to have nine cricket matches out of the 44 events that they predict to have at the venue annually. It certainly makes it harder to justify building it if international cricket and potentially domestic cricket are unable to play at the proposed Macquarie Point stadium.
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While the exact requirement of a newly built/heavily redeveloped stadium was expected (or heavily implied) of both the Gold Coast Suns and GWS Giants before they entered the competition, Tasmania’s situation is completely different from what the previous expansion teams faced and thus requires a different solution. Tasmania already has two stadiums that are of AFL/AFLW standard in both Bellerive Oval and the UTAS Stadium having a capacity of approximately 20,000 – neither Gold Coast nor GWS had anything similar.
This unique opportunity for using both stadiums should be maximized as much as possible from the perspective of the AFL and the Tasmanian government. For instance, they should look to split the 11/12 home games that a Tasmainian team would get between both Bellerive (Hobart) and UTAS (Launceston).
Given the bid’s unique position as being a team of the state and not a particular city, why not play into it and split games between the north and south regions of Tasmania and demonstrate the uniqueness of a state-based team by representing all of Tasmania? Not only does this save some of the $375 million that the Tasmanian government had set aside for Macquarie Point, but these funds can be redirected to other aspects of the AFL bid such as building training facilities. It can also be an investment in grassroots football and development which will help improve the longevity of the team within the competition by having the ability to produce players ready for the AFL/AFLW.
It should be also noted that UTAS Stadium is about to go through a $208 million redevelopment that would see it seat a capacity of 27,500 which should be complete before the proposed team would start competing in the AFL. Over the last 22 years, with its partnerships with both Hawthorn and St Kilda, it has shown to be capable to host AFL games including hosting the two elimination finals games in 2021 over its big brother in Hobart.
(Photo by Rob Blakers/Getty Images)
It further reinforces that the idea of using both stadiums would be beneficial for the side considering that UTAS averaged a higher attendance (15,210) compared to Bellerive (11,323) although there are probably other factors that played into that such as the quality of matches and teams playing amongst other factors.
Perhaps it would be smarter for the collective to inject an extra $100 million to place a roof over UTAS as there is far greater room to expand there compared to Bellerive and thus takes care of the AFL’s concern about being able to play football in any conditions with the roof in place.
Whether Tasmania does or doesn’t get a new stadium at Macquarie Point to be able to house its long-awaited AFL/AFLW team, it shouldn’t be the final hurdle regarding their bid for the 19th license. Considering that they have shown to be able to host AFL games using two high-quality stadiums over the last 22 years, surely it would have been better to have used the current infrastructure and upgraded what was already there before going into plans for a completely brand-new stadium.
But alas, all shall be revealed in the coming weeks.
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