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Dreams are free. Clockwise from top left: SoFi Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Optus Stadium, Singapore National Stadium (Photos: Getty Images)
Dreams are free. Clockwise from top left: SoFi Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Optus Stadium, Singapore National Stadium (Photos: Getty Images)

OPINIONSportsNovember 25, 2022

How to save Auckland’s stadium shemozzle

Dreams are free. Clockwise from top left: SoFi Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Optus Stadium, Singapore National Stadium (Photos: Getty Images)
Dreams are free. Clockwise from top left: SoFi Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Optus Stadium, Singapore National Stadium (Photos: Getty Images)

What we have is unacceptable; what we could have is surprisingly achievable, argues Brian Finn in the final part of his stadium trilogy.

This story first appeared on The Bounce, a Substack newsletter by Dylan Cleaver.

Back in 2020 I was sitting on the couch watching an early-season NFL game – my Chicago Bears were playing the Los Angeles Rams at the Rams’ brand new home field, SoFi Stadium. The coverage cut to a beautiful shot of the stadium’s exterior façade. My lovely wife, walking past, asked why they were showing a new airport on the screen.

“No, honey. That’s not an airport, it’s a football stadium. In fact, it’s the most expensive stadium ever built. And it’s magnificent!”

“Oh,” she said, “why can’t we have a stadium like that?”

And that is the billion dollar question. Actually, in the case of LA’s new stadium it’s more like the US$5.5 billion question, but you get the picture.

SoFi Stadium, home of the LA Chargers and LA Rams (Photo: Ric Tapia/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

My other half isn’t alone in envying LA’s sparkly new venue. New Zealand Herald columnist Matt Heath was drooling and sweating (best you read his column) during a recent visit to the Rams and Chargers’ new stadium. As he noted: “Americans do live sports brilliantly. SoFi and Dodgers stadiums are wonders to behold.”

So, as Plato once famously never pondered: Why can’t we do good stadia?

Australia can. Singapore can. Hong Kong can. Canada can. Ireland can. The Brits can’t keep their Prime Ministers entertained long enough to deliver anything, but they managed to fund and build Wembley Stadium, an Olympic Stadium and the swanky new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in north London, as well as many other football and rugby ground upgrades.

Yes, money is an issue and I’ll get to that, but as I pontificated in a previous column, the bigger picture is that we are crap at infrastructure.



Heat and light 

We are particularly crap at stadium developments, as the recent funding angst over the Christchurch Stadium demonstrated.

For some reason that is more peculiar to New Zealand than anywhere else.

Stadium deliberations generate a lot of heat and emotion, often for no justifiable reason. In Auckland Council meetings in recent years, stadium debates over relatively small sums (preliminary development of a cricket oval at Western Springs; funding for an alternate speedway base at Colin Dale Park) have generated hours of angry, ill-informed debate, sometimes without a concrete decision, while billion-dollar decisions around other infrastructure projects have been approved with barely a murmur.

Where Aotearoa’s stadium projects have succeeded, they have benefited from that rare thing in our civic and political realms – vision and leadership. Dame Fran Wilde was instrumental in getting the Wellington Stadium built against significant opposition. Malcolm Farry in Dunedin drove headlong at getting a new, covered stadium funded, built and opened in time for RWC 2011.  You could argue that prime minister Helen Clark and her sports minister Trevor Mallard nearly pulled something amazing off with the proposed Stadium New Zealand on Auckland’s waterfront in time for the 2011 tournament – but the word “nearly” is doing all the heavy lifting there.

So, how do we get a decent stadium in Auckland? One that reflects our passion for sport. One that caters for the needs of our most frequent hirers. One that is located in the right* place?

Well, I have a plan.

Let’s fix Auckland (or at least its stadiums)

Before we try and finance and build a new venue we first need to work out how to sort out the complicated stadium management structures in Auckland.

There are three Council-owned venues – Mt Smart Stadium, North Harbour Stadium and Western Springs. Then there is one privately owned venue – Eden Park. Yes, that’s right – Eden Park is a private venue with private beneficiaries and that doesn’t change just because CEO Nick Sautner keeps describing it as a community venue.

Only a few weeks ago, the New Zealand Herald was gasping at the shock-horror story that the All Blacks might not play a test match at fortress Eden Park in 2023. The main reason is that many of our major stadia will be tied up next year hosting the Fifa Women’s World Cup (and observing some rather demanding Fifa hosting requirements).

However, it’s not such a shock when you consider that despite Eden Park’s superior size and capacity, sports bodies don’t like hiring the place as it’s a difficult and expensive venue to use and work with. While hirers get up to 1.2m from ground level to advertise their sponsors, Eden Park has sold every piece of wall and signage above that including the big screens (some of which were funded by Auckland Council). You could see how much advertising there is because all of it had to be covered up for the Rugby World Cup due to clean-venue requirements. Hint: There was a lot of stuff covered up!

As one hirer described it to me, it’s like playing a game in Times Square. Take a look at other venues across the Tasman and around the world and you will see that host teams and hirers are able to create their own immersive environment through access to LED parapet screens and signage. The Eden Park business model means they are selling all that real estate.

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On top of that, Eden Park has clearly demonstrated it is less interested in sport and more interested in concerts these days. Even Auckland Cricket acknowledges as much in their latest annual report, which signals a move away from Eden Park to a “new home” from a range of possible alternatives.

There have been many efforts from successive councils, council officials, CCOs and others to develop a cohesive plan for improving Auckland’s stadia facilities. Among these plans were at least two attempts (and currently a third is underway led by Tātaki Auckland Unlimited) to bring Eden Park and Auckland Council’s venues under one stadium network.

The Eden Park Trust Board has typically gone along with the conversation until such time as the reality hits that Eden Park would lose its independence and its two enshrined beneficiaries – Auckland Rugby and Auckland Cricket – would have to jump off the gravy train that has supported them for decades.

At the same time, Auckland Council’s changing structures, Covid-hit budget and major capital commitments to the City Rail Link and water infrastructure, all mean they have little wiggle room to pump any new funding into stadia. This is while Eden Park continues to siphon much-needed revenue in the form of concerts from the ratepayer-owned Mt Smart and Western Springs.

Several times in the past 20 years, Auckland sports fans have been feinted out by the possible, potential, proposed prospect of a gleaming new footy stadium – sometimes on the waterfront; sometimes in or near the city; sometimes… some time? Each time, those hopes have been dashed against the rock known as “the status quo”.

The status quo sucks

You know the lingo. “Oh it sort of works”; “yeah it’s pretty crappy but we make do”; “if we just give it a lick of paint it should be good for another decade.”

But what if we could do better? What if we could be like Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland or Canada or… anywhere really? What if we designed and built a proper national stadium for football codes in downtown Auckland? And then we could build a proper cricket oval somewhere and future-proof oval sporting codes.

To achieve that we’d need to break the status quo.

At the height of the debate over the Christchurch stadium funding earlier this year, a major stadium operator told me that one solution to the challenges of funding and then operating a new stadium in the city would be to put the new Christchurch facility and Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium under one operating structure.

Similar shared stadium arrangements have been successfully utilised in Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales.

Optus Stadium in Perth (Photo: Paul Kane / Getty Images)

The shared management of Auckland’s Council-owned stadia since 2010 has already proved the value of such a model, saving tens of millions of dollars of ratepayer money and requiring less resource. Case study – Eden Park has the same staffing numbers for one venue as Auckland Council has for three.

So if Eden Park won’t willingly come to the table – what will change it? The experience in Australia is that the legacy codes must be incentivised to give up their ride on the gravy train. That means writing a cheque for Auckland Rugby and Auckland Cricket, wishing them well in their future endeavours and then handing the keys of Eden Park over to Auckland Stadiums or some replacement management structure to manage all of the city’s stadia.

Once that happens, there is the potential to plan for a long-term future for all of Auckland’s venues. Such a model would need to come under public ownership and management to be effective. It would be unthinkable to pull the legacy aspects of privately-owned Eden Park Trust’s current structure into a new stadium environment.

Why? For a start, they have no money. As recently as this year, they have gone cap in hand to Council for maintenance funding. Second, the idea of providing a revenue stream through publicly-funded facilities to private organisations (Eden Park Trust, Auckland Rugby and Auckland Cricket) is anathema to any notion of fairness and equity for other hirers. It immediately drives up the cost as NZ Rugby, NZ Cricket, the Blues and the Warriors are all too familiar with.

So assuming Auckland Council / Auckland Unlimited could bring the stadia under one umbrella, they could bring all the stakeholders together, identify the current and future facility needs and work towards a new footprint for Auckland’s venues.

In all likelihood, that would arrive at the need for a rectangular stadium (for codes such as rugby, rugby league, football and concerts) and an oval ground for cricket and, potentially other uses. Australia’s AFL, for example, continues to scout for a toehold in New Zealand, possibly via a WAFL franchise.

Such a blueprint must also give further consideration to the future needs, such as the growth in women’s sports and the impacts on athlete and fan facilities, esports, concerts and multi-sport and marquee events.

Could Auckland’s existing venues fit the bill? In my view the answer is no, no, no and maybe. Mt Smart Stadium is ageing and in need of significant maintenance and upkeep – and is in the wrong place. North Harbour doesn’t have the right configuration – and is in the wrong place. Eden Park has the wrong configuration, is the wrong size for all but a couple of events each year – and is in the wrong place. Western Springs, as was previously proposed, could make a terrific cricket ground as it is already a natural oval.

Some of the existing venues could be repurposed for more modest uses (training and community use), while others could be retired with the funds generated from re-using the land reinvested into sport and recreation.

That will take time, of course. In the meantime, we should maximise the lifespan of the venues we have while developing and then committing to a plan for renewal and, ideally, new venues.

Say you’ll build it… and they will come

Which brings us back to the starting point. How could Auckland afford to plan for, design and build a new stadium to take the place of the existing venues? And how is that even feasible when there is an inflation crisis, a lingering pandemic, international conflict and building and supply chain limitations?

Incredibly, it is possible if we move outside the bounds of public funding and control. Singapore’s National Stadium, and Perth’s Optus Stadium were both built under PPP (Public Private Partnerships) and third-party management services. Similarly, private equity or investment funds have put significant money into stadia in other places.

The reality is that stadia, like other public infrastructure, are good, long-term plays for global investment funds. They are permanent, they usually have a reliable income path and are underpinned by a partnership with central or local government that provides certainty.

Singapore National Stadium (Photo: Christian Richters/View Pictures/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

You might think a small market like ours might struggle to attract such investment, but we have already seen private equity invest in the commercial assets of our largest sport; a private consortium bid for the construction of the new Christchurch stadium; and a PPP model underpinned the construction of Spark Arena, New Zealand’s busiest entertainment venue.

We’ve also had private consortia enter the market to develop everything from prisons to motorways.

Such mechanisms allow public entities to offset the upfront funding and much of the risk of development through a private sector third party. Yes, ratepayers would need to pick up some of the tab, but, importantly, not all of it. And it would remove some of the risk of escalating costs.

Consider the option of a central city stadium located on Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and railway land behind Spark Arena, in a development supported by hotels, restaurants and bars, and with apartments and offices rounding out the offer.

That sounds like a development opportunity that major investors and developers would want to kick the tyres on. What would Peter Cooper (the man behind the transformative Britomart development) and his contemporaries be able to do with such an opportunity? And for fans, how good would it be to walk from a bar and restaurant a few hundred metres into the national stadium and take your seat for a concert, a Warriors or Blues game, or an All Blacks or Black Ferns match?

It would also transform the eastern edge of Auckland and make it attractive for local businesses and neighbours, and encourage complementary development, enhancing the value and prospects of land and buildings owned by Ngāti Whātua, Council and others**.

Sorting out Auckland’s venues would also allow sport and entertainment hirers to maximise the opportunities of the largest population base in the country and showcase New Zealand on the world stage – from both regular club (Super Rugby Pacific, NRL, A Leagues), international (All Blacks and Black Ferns, All Whites and Football Ferns) and global (Commonwealth Games, British & Irish Lions, World Cup) events.

It’s more achievable than many people – especially the burghers of Eden Park – would have you believe.

It just requires some vision, clear leadership and a plan for change.


* With the exception of Western Springs which has good motorway access – all of Auckland’s venues are badly located.

** Please note I am not championing one of the many and much-vaunted “waterfront stadium” options. There’s a simple reason for that. The land is not available and it will be years before it will be (and I’m a big fan of moving the port). There are also significant technical (digging up the sea bed), optical (don’t start me on view shafts) and competing interest issues around trying to claim waterfront land. There’s a perfectly good site, which was identified in the Council-commissioned pre-feasibility study, right behind Spark Arena, which would work superbly.

Keep going!
The Rugby Championship winning All Blacks and the World Cup winning Black Ferns (Photos: Getty Images / Design: Tina Tiller)
The Rugby Championship winning All Blacks and the World Cup winning Black Ferns (Photos: Getty Images / Design: Tina Tiller)

SportsNovember 24, 2022

Every All Blacks and Black Ferns test in 2022, ranked and reviewed

The Rugby Championship winning All Blacks and the World Cup winning Black Ferns (Photos: Getty Images / Design: Tina Tiller)
The Rugby Championship winning All Blacks and the World Cup winning Black Ferns (Photos: Getty Images / Design: Tina Tiller)

One year. Twenty-five games of international rugby. How many do you remember?

Maybe you think ranking all the tests played this year involving New Zealand’s senior 15-a-side representative teams, in other words the Black Ferns and All Blacks, would be a straightforward exercise. More fool you.

Weighing up the relative merits of each of the 25 matches required a heady cocktail of science, maths and feelings to come up with a definitive answer. The formula is too complicated to write down, but if you can imagine a combination of Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem, Archimedes’ Buoyancy Principle and Keith Quinn’s Twitter feed you might get some idea. Anyway, here we go.


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25. Black Ferns 95-12 Japan

Eden Park, September 24

With six weeks between the second Laurie O’Reilly test and the World Cup, the Black Ferns needed this “test” for a tune up. Nobody else did.

24. Black Ferns 28-0 Canada

Waitākere Stadium, June 12

The Pacific Four Series was an important piece of the Black Ferns build-up puzzle, but aside from a great solo try to Ruby Tui and a couple of yellow cards, nobody is remembering this test.

23. Black Ferns 50-6 USA

Northland Events Centre, June 18

See above. This feels like we’re picking on the Black Ferns, but we’re actually picking on pre-World Cup tests. With the best will in the world, these games are for coaches and players, not viewers. In Whangārei the Black Ferns set piece wobbled but they had way too much class.

22. All Blacks 53-3 Argentina

Waikato Stadium, September 3

This was when All Black apathy was at an all-time high. Ian Foster’s retention had been announced at a show-trial press conference and his team then promptly lost the next test to this opponent. The Pumas subsequently spent the next week drinking at the Outback Tavern and New Zealand spent it stewing. The ABs responded with a big win but, frankly, no one outside of Foster and Sam Cane cared.

21. Australia 14-22 Black Ferns

Adelaide Oval, August 27

When you play the same team four times in a few months, one of those tests has to suffer. After a crushing win in the first Laurie O’Reilly, Wayne Smith picked an experimental side for this trans-Tasman jape and it showed in a disjointed, dull performance.

20. South Africa 26-10 All Blacks

Mbombela, August 7

There’ll be a job-security theme running through many of the All Blacks entries and let’s just say Ian Foster’s wasn’t high after this toothless performance, their third loss on the trot, and subsequent press conference where he uttered the infamous, “I felt it was probably our most improved performance this year; I felt in some areas we really shifted our game forward.” Cue up the memes.

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19. Black Ferns 57-0 Scotland

Northland Events Centre, October 22

Scotland had come heartbreakingly close to beating both Wales and Australia in Pool A but forgot to stop and fill up at G.A.S. Bream Bay. By the time they got to Whangārei they were running on empty. The Black Ferns didn’t need to be much good but decided to be anyway, racing to a 45-0 halftime lead that featured a double to Renee Wickliffe, the second of which was a gem.

18. All Blacks 12-23 Ireland

Forsyth Barr Stadium, July 9

This first Irish win on New Zealand soil might have been a riotous occasion for those watching in green, but this was an inexcusably poor game of rugby under the Dunedin roof, marked only by Angus Ta’avao being red carded for face-butting Garry Ringrose and the All Blacks ballsing up their replacements so Ardie Savea couldn’t return. Also for Ireland’s Peter O’Mahony calling Cane a “shit Richie McCaw”, which was lauded in some quarters as being on a par with the wit and wisdom of Oscar Wilde, but is actually kind of just a shit thing to say to a fellow professional.

17=  Black Ferns 56-12 Wales

Waitākere Stadium, October 16

17= Black Ferns 55-3 Wales

Northland Events Centre, October 29

The World Cup was not flawless. In the space of a fortnight the hosts were pitted against the women of the valleys and the first Pool A clash foretold exactly how the quarterfinal would unfold. Portia Woodman scored a double in both matches but perhaps unfairly the thing that will stick with me is how she should have passed when scoring both her tries in the pool match.

15. Japan 31-38 All Blacks

National Stadium, October 29

I want to give the Brave Blossoms more credit here but the harsh reality is this was cack, with the All Blacks starting backline featuring Fin Christie, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, Braydon Ennor, Sevu Reece, Caleb Clarke and Stephen Perofeta. This test is best remembered for the shade Japan coach Jamie Joseph threw afterwards: “The key for us really is to go to England now and replicate that performance against a better side.”

14. All Blacks 42-19 Ireland

Eden Park, July 2

Gets severely marked down for being the most misleading result of the season. I was in the crowd, was a sober driver… and still struggle to remember a single thing about it aside from Pita Gus Sowakula scoring a try. Which also turned out to be misleading.

13. Wales 23-55 All Blacks

Principality Stadium, November 6

Wayne Pivac’s Wales were absolutely ofnadwy and at times even anghymwys, but Ardie Savea’s dummy!

12. Black Ferns 23-10 Australia

Tauranga Domain, June 6

While the rest of the Pacific Four Series was relegated to the outskirts of these rankings, this test, on the final Queen’s Birthday Monday of the foreseeable future, carried more weight because it was the first test with Smith in charge and Ted being paid to look his most “Ted”. It wasn’t excellent, but it was a come-from-behind win and it was most definitely the start of something.

11. All Blacks 18-25 Argentina

Orangetheory Stadium, August 27

The Pablo Matera-inspired Pumas were immense, so this test gets a boost to show we’re not all about the home team here. But let this sink in: after the week in which Foster’s continued leadership of the team was confirmed, his loyal subjects responded with a performance so bad Stuff ran the headline: “NZ Rugby left with egg on its face after All Blacks suffer historic loss to Argentina.”

10. Scotland 23-31 All Blacks

Murrayfield, November 14

Given that Scotland remain the one tier-one side the All Blacks haven’t lost to, a win in Edinburgh shouldn’t warrant OTT celebration, but this was a sneaky good test, with a blinding All Blacks start met with a great Scottish middle, requiring a powerful, bench-assisted New Zealand finish. Debutant Mark Telea also emerged as a better wing option than anything New Zealand started the tour with.

9. Black Ferns 52-5 Australia

Orangetheory Stadium, August 20

If Tauranga was the start, then this first Laurie O’Reilly test at Christchurch was the crystallisation of the idea that airlifting resources into a camp at the 11th hour might just be crazy enough to work. It was a big night for Kendra Cocksedge, playing her second and final test in her adopted city, although the floor belonged to three-try wing Ayesha Leti-I’iga, showing the Ferns’ extraordinary depth in the three-quarters.

8. All Blacks 40-14 Australia

Eden Park, September 24

Probably New Zealand’s most convincing performance of the year. A Rugby Championship-clinching demolition of an Australian team that didn’t even get as close as the final score suggests. Jordie Barrett proved liars of those who said he couldn’t play 12. (Oh wait, that was Foster, you say?) Another corner turned? Pfffft.

7. All Blacks 22-32 Ireland

Sky Stadium, July 16

This elevated ranking serves as a short, magnanimous note to Ireland to say, “Well done chaps, you deserved it.” With consecutive losses on home soil and four out of the past five, New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson asked around for Razor’s Robertson number and put it into his contacts under “Plan B”. 

6. England 25-25 All Blacks

Twickenham, November 20

Patriots might disagree, but blowing a 19-point lead against a side that had shown nothing – nothing! – for 70 minutes was the perfect coda for this All Black season. Oh, and that try to Rieko Ioane was something else.

5. Black Ferns 41-17 Australia

Eden Park, October 8

You might look at the score and go “meh” but then you’d have no idea about the sense of the occasion or how quickly the party atmosphere turned to anxiety when the Ferns found themselves in a 0-17 hole with half an hour gone. I think we have to acknowledge the worst of our national characteristics and assume the World Cup would have been a disaster if the home team had collapsed in that first game. Instead they pulled off a comeback for the ages.

4. South Africa 23-35 All Blacks

Ellis Park, August 14

A gloriously redemptive All Blacks performance when it was least expected, which featured a nose-thumbing try to beleaguered captain Cane and a sanguine Foster telling Jeff Wilson he still didn’t know whether he would be coach by the end of the following week but he was going to enjoy this win. It was the catalyst for the All Blacks winning the Rugby Championship but it was in other respects a false dawn.

3. Australia 37-39 All Blacks

Marvel Stadium, September 15

Before Twickenham collapse there was the Melbourne disintegration. After a first half that lasted 58 minutes and featured three yellow cards it was difficult to see what further drama the second could bring, but referee Mathieu Raynal found a way. The All Blacks led this one 31-13 and looked odds on to humiliate Dave Rennie’s Wallabies in AFL territory before switching off and imperilling any goodwill the team recovered after thrashing Argentina. A late, long-range Nic White penalty put Australia ahead and when they won a penalty while defending their line late on it was game over and another black mark for Foster. Instead Raynal pinged Bernard Foley for time wasting, Jordie Barrett scored in the corner – the ninth try of the match – and the rugby watchers of both countries wondered what the hell they had just seen.

2. Blacks Ferns 25-24 France

Eden Park, November 5

Hands up who, on first glance, thought Santo Taumata’s tackle in midfield was close to a perfect exclamation point on a Black Ferns defensive effort that was about to propel them into the World Cup final. (Picture of me on a couch, arm thrust enthusiastically skyward.) Hands up who, on second, third and fourth glances, thought Taumata was about to undergo the trauma of having committed the act that was going to cost the Black Ferns a place in the final. (Picture of me cowering behind a couch, arm meekly raised.) What a game. What a classic example of how not to close out a match. And sorry Caroline Drouin, a wonderful player, but what a miss.

1. Black Ferns 34-31 England

Eden Park, November 12

To the surprise of nobody, that complete mindfuck of a World Cup final comes out on top. It had everything from English set-piece and mauling precision, to a red card, to Ruahei Demant’s imagination, to Stacey Fluhler’s broken ankle, to the Hand of God and it all happened in a cauldron of extreme jeopardy in front of a crowd as engaged as any seen in a rugby match here since at least 2011 and probably forever. The biggest occasion of the year was also the best match – a rare and cherished combination.


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