The travelling circus: stadia discussion

Any changes will require essentially starting from scratch. Will need new structural testing, land testing etc to confirm the changes are viable and possible. Then following from that, a new tendering process would have to start which would involve the main builder, which would then require tendering from contractors etc. It’d set construction back by a year easily, plus the significant waste of money involved.

The longer the SFS isn’t in use, the more money is lost

Tend to agree… Any changes from now, including shrinking the size of the stadium or a switch to a refurb (which would need retrofitting of fire systems, lifts escalators and still not fix the poor roofline),
Are going to add to the time we will be without a stadium.

And with all the costs involved in redesign and retender etc probably wipe out any savings.

I can live with an extra year away to not be stuck with another 45k white elephant for our 13k fans, but I get that other people just want it done with.

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I’m really hoping that with “club mode” in operation it helps in regards to that.

Well you do want to have enough seats for when we host Grand Finals, or be able to host Socceroos games.

And hopefully crowds will grow over time.

There are cycles. The Waratahs probably struggle to match SFCs average crowds at present yet in 2006-8 (before they moved some games to ANZ) were selling out games on a regular basis.

Did we ever get confirmation whether or not that is actually happening?

I haven’t seen anything to say that it’s not.

Here’s what club mode would look like. Pretty good IMO, makes it feel far more rectangular.


p.s. I love the way that the artist couldn’t be bothered removing the fans from the top tiers when overlaying the LED curtain.

20,000 “obstructed view” tickets?

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well played Sir, some coffee actually passed through my nose.

Wasnt one of the first things that came out after the confirmation was that the club mode thing was scrapped?

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I really hope not, I haven’t seen anything to say that it’s not going ahead.

Do you have a link? It might not have been mentioned in the confirmation, which might have led some people to speculate that it was scrapped, bit I don’t remember seeing it stated anywhere.

I don’t see it mentioned in the more recent articles/facts sheets etc. so perhaps it has been quietly omitted. I’ll be really disappointed if this is the case, it makes complete sense to have the two modes.

It still appeared to be a thing at the last members forum (last year), because I asked Scott Barlow about it. I was interested to understand how the two mode set up accommodates SCG trust members, and he confirmed that all trust members would be on the 2nd tier, and it’s the 3rd tier that gets closed off.

Looks pretty awesome, although I have my doubts that the LED curtain will show the club crest. I’m envisioning “I’M LOVIN’ IT” scrolling around the stadium in 5m high lettering for 90mins.

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Nah, surely SportsBet live odds, with instant bonus cash-out opportunities flashing up from time to time in-sync with the action on the pitch.

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I definitely read they scrapped it for cost-saving reasons. Let me try and google it for you.

From the Final Report of the ‘Sydney Stadiums Strategy’:

B
Infrastructure NSW explained that the scope of the project’s options was adjusted to remove ‘two items of emerging technology, namely the “media halo”, which is an LED display at the leading edge of the roof, and the “club mode curtain” which would allow the venue to be configured to a smaller size for club matches’. Infrastructure NSW indicated this adjustment was proposed by ‘external reviewers as a way of moderating the cost of the project’. The original scope of the project was estimated to cost up to $775 million, while the adjusted project reduced this to a cost of $729 million.

(Page 29)

Well that’s just rubbish then isn’t it? We’ll be similarly off to the Roar playing in their place - our crowds aren’t much better even in good times.

I literally just read that report and discovered the same thing. FFS.