PANSTADIA & ARENA MANAGEMENT WINTER 2013/14


ANZ Stadium: listening to a vision of the future


The management at ANZ Stadium in Sydney, Australia, identified concert quality audio as a way to raise the level of excitement for fans.


I


n the thirteen short years since its inauguration as the main stadium for


the Olympic Games 2000 in Sydney Australia, ANZ Stadium has gone through two major infrastructure changes. The first was structural and saw a major reconfiguration of the venue with retractable seating for 7,000 people installed to each side of the rectangular field. Such work represents a major capital cost and since the Games ended ANZ Stadium has been an independently owned self-financing venue, so this was not a decision taken lightly. Nevertheless enabling cricket and Australian Rules football to be played there as well as both rugby codes and soccer has seen a positive impact on the revenue side.


The second change was no less radical, yet as the stadium’s General Manager Simon Davies says, “We set ourselves the goal of achieving maximum impact at minimal cost.” The change was environmental, “We always strive to make the visitor experience as enjoyable as possible,” continues Davies.


“We had already made great strides in this direction with choice and quality in the food and beverages we offer, and back in 2009 we also added the southern hemisphere’s largest LED video screens in each corner of the stadium; a first for Australia. But now we wanted to raise the level of excitement; we wanted something that would make the experience truly immersive.”


This immersive excitement was to come from an unexpected quarter. “Any well-run venue will seek to maximise utilisation and when you have exhausted the sporting potential you have to look at other mass spectator events,” continues Davies. “Stadiums frequently host big rock concerts, ANZ Stadium certainly does, and the sound systems these shows bring to our venues are really potent. But these are concert systems and come with the tour; the only time you see systems of this potency actually installed in stadia is for world-class events like the Olympics or the NFL Super Bowl, but this is only


made affordable by the financial input from worldwide broadcasting.


“The thing is we have seen the positive effect such systems have on our audience; look at London last year, the impact of great audio for the opening ceremony was profound. But these systems are only ever temporary. So we asked ourselves, ‘Why can’t we do this at ANZ Stadium on a permanent basis, and can we achieve this in an affordable fashion?’ That’s the task we set ourselves and I believe we have achieved those goals on both counts.”


Special sound, every event


Davies and the ANZ Stadium management team led by MD Daryl Kerry were fortunate in one respect: the man who designed the London Olympics sound system was Australian. “Scott Willsallen had cut his teeth working on the Sydney Olympics and had, over the years, worked with ANZ Stadium on the special events we staged here using the pre-existing sound system,” explains


All images credit: Scott Willsallen 114


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