Cannot stand this bloke but worth a read

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/eels-won-t-cop-paying-for-stadium-splurge-madness-so-why-should-we-20181017-p50a8o.htmlEels won't cop paying for stadium splurge madness, so why should we?

Peter FitzSimons
By Peter FitzSimons
17 October 2018 — 4:24pm

    They what?

    They knocked down Parramatta Stadium and built a flash new one at a cost of $300 million, without having the key tenants – the Parramatta Eels and the Western Sydney Wanderers – locked in to play there, at an agreed fee?

    It would seem so. The latest reports have the Eels prepared to walk rather than have their fee per match go up from $70,000 to about three times that amount, and the Wanderers are in a similar position.

    Empty arena: Western Sydney Stadium under construction, but its two intended home teams haven't even agreed to play there yet.

    Empty arena: Western Sydney Stadium under construction, but its two intended home teams haven't even agreed to play there yet.

    And why would they agree to it? The Eels never had a problem with fitting in their fans to the old Parramatta Stadium, and there was no particular big push to knock it down. And while it is all very well for the NSW Government to build its own sporting monuments and make ludicrous projections about how the expenditure will be worth it, and deliver great economic boons and bonuses, now that we are at the nitty-gritty end of actually trying to pay for it with commercial sporting activity, no one thinks it is worth three times the old one.

    If the Eels did agree to it, where would the money come from?

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    Opposition Leader Luke Foley summed it up well yesterday:

    “It’s the mums and dads and the kids who passionately follow the Eels who’ll be slugged through much higher ticket prices and much higher prices for food and drink to attend the Eels games. In the end, it’s footy fans who’ll pay.”

    And what they don’t pay, it is we taxpayers who will have to make up the difference. Of course, in the end, the Government will have no choice but to do a deal with the Eels and Wanderers, because to not do so would be a crippling humiliation for them – but the better the deal they do for the sports team, the more we taxpayers will be slugged.

    Looking after the big end of town: NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian's own number crunchers won't back her projections.

    Looking after the big end of town: NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian's own number crunchers won't back her projections.Credit:AAP

    This is a serious matter, and plays to exactly what your humble correspondent has been banging on about for the last 12 months or so. From the beginning, the very idea of knocking down three relatively modern stadiums all within cooee of each other and all in the one sporting market was financial madness. I knew it, most of you knew it, and even the government knew it.

    Despite some ludicrous blandishments from the Premier about how one of the new stadiums would pay for itself in two years, her own hard-nosed number crunchers wouldn’t touch it, and the best they could project would be that the government might get back 95 cents on the dollar.

    A bare beginning to that happening was if the sporting teams that used the new stadia would cough up the newly increased fees.

    At first blush, it looks like they’re not, which, again, is not a surprise. You might recall, earlier in the year the leaked email from the Chair of Venues NSW, Christine McLoughlin, to VenuesLive, the mob running Western Sydney Stadium, where she said: “The $2.3 billion allocated by the NSW Government to rebuild two stadiums will haunt them until the next election.”

    She also mocked the staggering amount committed to rebuilding the SFS asking, “what’s the business case and will crowds fill it?”

    We are, frankly, still to find out.

    But right here, right now, with the Wanderers and the Eels ready to walk rather than pay through the nose for the new stadium at Parramatta, this demonstrates that whatever business case they did have is about to be blown apart.

    Which leaves us where, exactly?

    In the usual position – gazing with rage at the bulldozers starting to rumble their way towards the SFS, as the NSW Government tries to get it knocked over before the election next March, so there will be no choice but to rebuild.

    Why the haste?

    Exactly.

    Again, Luke Foley put it well at his press conference on Tuesday morning.

    “If the Premier’s so confident of the merits of a Stadium Splurge, she should be confident enough to put those arguments to the people. Instead, and this is what’s rotten to the core here, planning approval hasn’t even been given to knock down the Allianz Stadium. Planning approval has certainly not been given to build a new stadium here.

    This is what’s rotten to the core here, planning approval hasn’t even been given to knock down the Allianz Stadium...

    Luke Foley

    "Yet the Premier wants to rush in and commit the State to spending $800 million on a new 45,000-seat stadium here, a completely unnecessary new stadium, before people get a chance to vote on it. She wants to send a wrecking ball in in January – that [is] just contempt for the people.”

    I entirely agree. Just as riding roughshod over the obvious view of the population to put gambling advertisements on the side of the Opera House was an exercise in looking after the powerful, not the people, so too this. (But don’t get me started!)

    Foley insists that sending “a wrecking ball in in January to make this Stadium Splurge here in Sydney East a fait accompli, [is an exercise] to look after the powerbrokers on the SCG trust, to issue lucrative contracts to construction companies and all the lawyers and so on who’ll take a cut and consultants in putting these deals together. The big end of town wins but the fans of course will be slugged through much higher ticket prices here, just like at Parramatta.”

    You get the drift.

    Call off the jam. The issue at Parramatta Stadium points to the fact that the government’s economic projections won’t work. They will insist they do work.

    So let the people decide, next election. Wake up, and stop the dozers!

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    Replies

    • Agreed. I cannot stand this guy, or his wife for that matter. But a pretty good read all the same
    • Parramatta stadium I can understand the need for that , but the SFS could wait.  The SFS still is perfectly fine and has ample corporate facilities .  The deal between Wanderers and Eels aside , Parramatta Stadium has heaps of potential to attract a full schedule of events to Sydney on top of what’s already on at ANZ .   When we were in Melbourne year before last there was Footy , AFL , and 3 major concerts on all in one night . 

      • The SFS doesn't meet current safety and access/egress regulations, along with facilities etc. The cost to fix this is the same as building a new stadium, which is what they were doing. The design was always short-sighted and had no room to modify structures. You watch, if there is a change of government we will be stuck with ANZ as it is as well as Foley has already stated he will stop that project and add that money to the $200B already spent on schools and hospitals - a drop in the ocean.

        In the end, ticket prices will be set by the market. If they are too high people will go to fewer games and the powers that be will have to re-assess pricing. By the way, have you tried taking a family to the AFL (especially Sydney)? It is more than twice the price of NRL.

        • Hence why I said it could wait . It’s not crucial to rebuild ( either was Parramatta admittedly ) . 

        • I love thie safety argument .

          seriously dude, they have been saying its unsafe and non compliant for three years and yet they still hold events there almost filling the place.

          Ask yourself this question. If a building or precinct is deemed to be unsafe, which organisation in  these modern litigious times would continue to hold events there?

          • Well I suppose that is the argument - that they will get more organisations using the venues if it had better facilities. We could still be riding Red Rattlers too - there was nothing wrong with them when they swapped them over for Tangaras.

            • At least when the rattlers had issues we could fix them on the run and you got the train to the destination, while old and outdated there was a lot more they could than the modern stuff, and you didn't get the power drops as could nudge the controller manually.

              • So why aren't we still using them? In fact why aren't we using the horse and cart? There was nothing wrong with them. Col you sound like someone who hates progress and you probably lament the city that Parramatta is very quickly becoming.

                These stadia are being replaced so that the modern international city of Sydney can continue to attract a wide range of events to NSW, which brings investment into the state. Look at what the other states have already done - we are a long way behind and this will bring us up to speed once all three are complete. For a city to continually attract investment (and give it's people the life they deserve) means it must be on top of it's infrastructure. Go to a third world country to see what happens without investment.

                • Brookvale is a red rattler . SFS is more Tangara Mach 1 .  Either way , convenient enough for the handicapped to sit in the nosebleeds or not , the SFS is far from the worst stadium in the world . 

                • Longy, my comments are based on the fact that I drove the rattlers for a couple of years, got out before the Tangarra's came but the DD sets were similar in their operation.

                  What I am saying and its a fact that the way the DD's were meant to be driven, was like an auto car, brakes off and put the master controller into full notch, idea being the sets would simply move off, gather speed in smooth and joyous mode, except if it was wet and other issues, where they kept tripping out and passenger complaints came often.

                  The rattlers you couldn't do that but you could accelerate faster without any drop outs and no jerking.  DD's could blow out, and you sat in the never world. Rattlers had fuses, and could be replaced and off you went. Didn't have to wait for the Equipment officer to get to you in order to fix it.

                  The modern fleets are nice, and I loved it working the XPT.

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