Collingwood president Eddie McGuire can be accused of a lot of things, but a lack of ambition has never been one of them. Latest in the long line of McGuire’s grand visions is today’s announcement of plans for a billion-dollar super-stadium in the middle of Melbourne’s famous sporting precinct, smack bang on the site of Hisense Arena.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has lauded the prominent football identity’s bolshie blueprint as a “bold plan”, a statement that on face value does seem at least half correct. Key to the McGuire masterplan is a bid to get rid of a venue in which he and his club have no financial or emotional stake by bulldozing cross-town Etihad Stadium, which would at least provide a more compelling spectacle than the NAB Challenge pre-season series.
In the same self-interested spirit of McGuire’s visions, I’d like to see Etihad razed to the ground too, because for 17 years it’s represented the very worst of the modern sports-industrial complex – a stadium-sized vampire that’s sucked vast sums of blood away from already-struggling AFL clubs while providing the actual football itself with a backdrop about as inspiring as an Ikea car park. Would McGuire’s be any different?
Last year, you’ll remember, the AFL became so concerned by growing consumer dissatisfaction and dwindling game attendances that it launched “Year of the fan”, a mostly successful exercise in distracting supporters from the increasingly soulless experience of modern sport with cheap meat pies and a bit of kick-to-kick. But if there’s an increasing tendency in the 35+ supporter base of AFL football to wonder what exactly happened to that fun, spontaneous, character-filled game they fell in love with as kids, they should consider both the symbolic and economic role that expensive stadium developments play in that slide away from the community values to which a not-for-profit league would better aspire.
There’s always been a theory that Etihad Stadium provides the spectator with superior views and in the sense that there’s no seat too far from the action that’s true, though explain this to half of the attendees of any given AFL day-game who’ll be staring into blinding sunlight all afternoon on account of the shonky orientation of the ground, but only when they’re not looking up at the retractable roof wondering why it’s ever open at all.
But Etihad is not all bad, obviously. Pine all you like for Waverley Park’s wide expanses and brutalist architecture or the ramshackle charms of Princes Park, Moorabbin and Western Oval, but in 2016 there are already enough reasons for fans to stay home and watch the game on their 50-inch flat screen TVs without adding two-hour car park queues and the stench of overflowing toilets to the mix.
Etihad’s location next to Southern Cross railway station is a dream for those wanting to get in and out of a game quickly. It’s also a godsend for those who live in the western and northern suburbs of Melbourne, a huge swath of the population not considered in the new Eddie-had concept.
And regardless, this plan of McGuire’s for a 60,000-seat undercover stadium nestled between the MCG and AAMI Park has more than a few potential snafus, not least the enormous public cost ($1bn being the conservative starting point), potentially huge disruptions to the Australian Open and other significant inconveniences for locals, including a huge strain on the already-malfunctioning Melbourne public transport system on a daily basis.
“The talks are serious and it gives us an opportunity to decide what the next plan is for our city,” says McGuire, not the Walter Burley Griffin that Melbourne asked for but apparently the one it needs. As well as sending Richmond railway station underground, his plan would turn Olympic Boulevard – the attractive thoroughfare between existing venues – into a tunnel.
The likely scenario is that this story serves primarily as a loud reinforcement of a range of personal interests and a means to cheap point-scoring; McGuire as the supposed champion of Joe Public; the Victorian parliamentary opposition positioning Andrews as a clueless champion of free-spending; former Hawthorn president and Liberal premier Jeff Kennett – whose Liberal government oversaw the Etihad Stadium development in the first place – scoffing at his old rival McGuire under the guise of some newfound love for tennis.
If you could build stadiums out of hot air and boasting, Melbourne would already have 20. This one would be closer to a monument to McGuire’s colossal ego.
And by “us”, McGuire does always means “me” or “Collingwood”, but there was a particularly telling comment he made today that told us everything we really need to know here: “If we can do it in a way that liberates so much money to be going back into ... the development of the game, and at the same time benefits every other code, it is worth having a look at,” he told the Nine Network.
But in a best case scenario for clubs like McGuire’s, that money will of course be liberated from the pockets of taxpayers to grease the wheel of a private football league already swimming in money. Those proposed “benefits” for rival codes will be outlined at a later date, no doubt, though McGuire’s claim that “we’re looking at an opportunity to bullet-proof the AFL, particularly the Victorian-based clubs”, and the small matter of the hypothetical venue being jointly run by the AFL and the MCC, possibly gives you some idea.
This idea of socialising the cost and privatising the benefit of sports stadiums is not a new one. It’s been perfected, like so many other sporting innovations, in the major sports franchise system in the US, where a small group of owners have been outrageously successful in holding entire cities to ransom in order to have their profit-producing stadiums built with public money.
But Australian sport doesn’t really work that way and we ought to call bullshit on this sort of stuff, just as we do money-draining events like Melbourne’s Formula One grand prix. Because the AFL is a “not for profit” organisation in name only. Last year, for example, the league managed to turn $559m worth of revenue into a $3.6m profit. In 2016, before its six-year, $2.5bn broadcast deal kicks in, it’ll actually make a loss.
Among the reasons for this meagre dividend on the game’s popularity is that the AFL redistributes vast sums of its revenues back to the clubs, a significant number of which consistently post losses because they’ve either been mismanaged or were unable to make money out of stadium deals like the ones that Etihad Stadium tenants have been tied to. Last year the league handed $245m back to the clubs, a $26.8m increase on the year before. Given the crippling financial legacy of the Docklands, just what kind of contractual snakepit would await the refugees who eventually signed on at this Hisense Arena site?
Melbournians could also ask a few more questions of their premier when he’s trotting out brainless guff like: “The MCG, Melbourne and Olympic park stadiums are the envy of the world, but in a competitive market we can’t sit back and let others pass us by.”
This logic, like McGuire’s – and indeed also the cautionary tale of Etihad Stadium’s short history – should give the average Victorian reason to reflect on precisely what they stand to gain out of the vanity projects of those who have nothing to lose.
