Auckland’s stadium decision is non-sensical — and the rest of the country is just as bad

Melbourne's Docklands Stadium - the template for what Auckland should have built 20 years ago.

We are about to spend more public money on more single-use stadiums to host fewer events for fewer people. Melbourne worked out the answer twenty-six years ago.

Why are we doing this again?

In March 2025, Auckland Council voted 17-2 to upgrade Eden Park rather than build a waterfront stadium at Quay Park. The "winning" plan adds a retractable roof and 10,000 seats to a privately-owned, suburban, single-sport stadium under noise curfews. The Eden Park Trust is now seeking $110 million from central government. The council’s own staff said neither option was financially feasible without significant public funding. We picked the cheaper-looking one anyway.

The South Island has just proven the point. Christchurch ratepayers spent $683 million on Te Kaha for a roofed 30,000-seat rectangular stadium. At NZ$22,767 per seat, it is the most expensive stadium per seat ever built. Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium opened at the same capacity for less than half. Two covered stadiums, four hours apart, both publicly funded, chasing the same handful of All Blacks tests, Super Rugby home games, rugby league and soccer one-offs, and concerts. Christchurch ratepayers now pay $94 a year extra in rates, rising to $209 by 2027-28, servicing the debt.

Wellington tried it first. The Cake Tin opened in 2000 and has had four corporate names — WestpacTrust, Westpac, Sky, now Hnry. The Wellington Sevens is dead. The All Blacks couldn’t fill it against Argentina last year. The Hurricanes have lost money for three seasons running. The most recent significant concert was Foo Fighters in January 2024.

Wellington picked half the seats so it could charge double the price. The corporate boxes filled. Everything else emptied.

The seats aren’t empty because Wellingtonians stopped liking rugby. They’re empty because the bar around the corner shows the same game on a 75-inch screen, has a working bathroom, no wind, better value food and beverage, no parking fee, and you walk home in five minutes. Hospitality turnover hit a record $15.99 billion last year. The hospitality sector has captured the leisure spend that used to flow to stadiums.

Here is the part that should embarrass us. New Zealanders, on a per-capita basis, spend roughly as much eating and drinking out as Melbournians do. The discretionary money exists. What Melbourne has and we don’t is somewhere worth going. The MCG, Marvel, AAMI Park, Melbourne Park and Flemington — a city of five million fills several stadiums regularly because they were built where people already are, configured for multiple sports, surrounded by hospitality. Marvel hosts 45-plus events a year. Eden Park manages around a dozen.

Kiwis aren’t spending less than Melbournians. They’re spending the same money at the pub instead — because the pub is the only venue that isn’t inconvenient.

Add Auckland’s 17 hours a year of lost time in traffic, $3+ per litre petrol, multiple-job holders up 18 per cent in five years, and a 61 per cent burnout rate — and the empty seats stop being a mystery. The advertised ticket is a fraction of what the household actually pays.

The model that works has been across the Tasman since the year the Cake Tin opened. Melbourne’s Docklands Stadium — now Marvel — was built in 2000 at A$460 million, privately financed, next to Southern Cross Station. Retractable roof. 56,000 seats. Adaptable seating for AFL, cricket, rugby league, soccer and concerts. Surrounded by hotels and hospitality. No noise complaints. No curfews. Built to seismic code. Cost less than Te Kaha. Hosts four times the events.

Auckland could have copied this in 2007, when Trevor Mallard wanted 60,000 seats on the waterfront for the Rugby World Cup. Or in 2021, after we won the America’s Cup. Or in 2024, when Quay Park was on the table. Each time, we picked the cheaper-looking suburban option — too small, too inflexible, too far from transport, too hemmed in by neighbours. Then, when promoters route Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and the Oasis reunion to Australia and skip us, we blame the cost-of-living crisis.

Build smaller, charge more, blame the population. It has been the New Zealand stadium philosophy for thirty years — and every empty seat is its receipt.

Defenders argue stadiums shouldn’t be judged on cost alone — that they are palaces of joy, drivers of wellbeing. Correct. That is the case against what we keep building. Marvel is a palace of joy because it is open most nights. Te Kaha is open about a dozen. Eden Park 2.1 will be the same. A stadium that sits dark fifty weeks a year is not civic infrastructure. It is a debt with a roof.

Eden Park 2.1 is the same answer Wellington gave in 1999, Dunedin in 2009, Christchurch in 2019. It will not host the events. It will not fill the seats. It will not pay for itself.

And Auckland ratepayers will be servicing the debt long after the next concert tour has been announced — in Melbourne.