Reconfiguring ANZ stadium would cost heaps and sydney needs an 80,000 seater. Its just too bad its so far away from a lot of people, but not all, because sydney is so big. And a transport system that works is a while away.
To what we can do, well they can build a new 50,000 seater based on the new lang park in sydney. And put it right next door to a train station (talking no more than a 200 meter walk.
Thats what they can do. People need to get behind that.
I think sydney needs 4 main stadiums for a city of its size, but at the least you need 3. You can't just stop at making homebush better to get to or more spectator friendly, or cheaper tickets. Thing with homebush to is that there is nothing to do after hours, unlike at Suncorp where you head into town for a night out if you like or go catch a bite to eat, at homebush there's nothing...drab, so keep homebush ONLY for the big games. There is nothing worse than travelling for hours to get to a stadium, watch an 80 minute game, then be left stranded with nothing to do, not even able to make a night out of it....this deters a huge amount of people, did the nrl know that? Do teams know that? More and more people want to make a night of it these days.
Besides that we know all the common ones; but there literally are 100's of things that people look for.
To get sydney right:
Draw a circle around the centre or heart of sydney on a map...its about an inch wide. A second area will be included, that being the CBD itself. This is ofcourse where the SFS is, and this together with the circles perimeter is where stadiums need to roughly be placed....we want it as central as possible to the population. But in the west, we may have two stadiums, but transversely opposed (at opposite ends of that perimeter).
1. Use the SFS again, but upgrade the transport facilities there. Include train fair, etc, in admission price for all stadiums.
2. Upgrade Parramatta stadium. Guess what. Teams other than Parramatta may need to play at Parramatta if thats a model that ends up working. It will be a 35-40,000 all seater.
3. Build a brand spanking new stadium south of Parramatta, somewhere around bulldogs territory or in between, whatever sussed-out location works. Base it off Suncorp Stadium and make it around 50,000 seats. Have another Oasis (that works out) project if that gets it off the ground; and I am sure business would be interested anyway: this is because this stadium is going to be THE BEST league stadium in the country, better than S/corp stadium because it may be slightly bigger. Time the building of the stadium to match the end of a few teams Homebush contracts and get them on board to help viability. THIS STADIUM IS GOING TO BE A SINGLE PURPOSE RUGBY LEAGUE STADIUM. No doubt other rectangle-field sports would use it perhaps.
4. Use Homebush for the huge matchups like origin and GF.
There you have it....with proper public transport to each ground, trains, buses, etc, and public transport included in ticket prices (help nrl) and decent grounds, and shock horror decent cheaper prices sydney will have a chance of building a supporter-attending culture.
Once that happens, I think League is in for huge potential in sydney. Going to these 4 stadiums is going to kick the stuffing out of going to brooky, etc.
If sharks chose, they may continue to use shark park, but should be made to switch all hilled areas to all seaters....strongly preferably to have said stands integrated with the other two main stands.
Minimise stadia used, maximise their facilities, focus support to going to certain areas, make it easy as possible to go.
