When it comes to events, Melbourne could teach Sydney a thing or two
Sydneysiders, it’s time we demand better from our leaders and ensure that we do not let more and more events fall away — or, even worse, let Melbourne outmanoeuvre us, writes Anna Caldwell.
Opinion
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Imagine the reaction of Victorians if someone proposed running the Melbourne Cup in another city for a couple of years. They’d riot. Even the inner-city hipster types who don’t do horse racing could be counted on to picket in their latte laneways.
And yet here we are in NSW twiddling our thumbs while the government threatens to lose our NRL Grand Final — a classically Sydney event — to another state.
The onus is on Premier Gladys Berejiklian to step up and strike a deal with the NRL to keep it here, and after already extending the deadline once, the NRL is still waiting for an answer.
What’s required is a fee of upwards of about $10 million a year to secure the match at one of the small Moore Park stadiums in 2021 and 2022.
That fee exists because NSW can’t offer ANZ stadium — as it initially promised — thanks to delays to the refurbishment schedule.
So using smaller stadiums means the NRL needs to cop a financial hit in revenue for reduced ticket sales.
I can reveal today there is a split among senior cabinet ministers over whether it’s a good idea to fork out cash to the NRL to secure the deal.
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While all agree it’s good for Sydney to keep the Grand Final, some are repulsed at the idea of paying the NRL more money.
“We are giving them two brand new stadiums, we took a political hit at the election — shouldn’t that be enough?” one minister told me.
Implicit in this is also fear that the government will attract political criticism if it shells out more money to the NRL.
“We thought we could have lost an election based on the stadiums spend — do we really need to spend more on the NRL?” the minister said.
They didn’t want the Grand Final to go elsewhere, but they didn’t want to deal with the political flack in spending money to keep it.
Given the way Sydney lost its mind over the stadiums spend, you can see where this mindset has come from.
Senior NRL figures, meanwhile, can’t fathom our dithering when Queensland, Perth and Victoria are banging down their door to spend even more to secure the match.
What an indictment it is on Sydney that we need to repeatedly have this debate over spending money on making ourselves a world-class events destination.
Why are we so complacent here?
We must summon the passion and the commitment to hang on to something that’s rightfully ours rather than just offering a collective shrug.
The truth is in NSW there is only one master when it comes to driving events — racing boss Peter V’landys.
The man has almost single-handedly taken it up to Melbourne in working relentlessly to create a buzz in the Everest to rival one of Australia’s most established stop-the-nation events in the Melbourne Cup.
When V’landys whispered this week that perhaps Melbourne should shift the date of the Cup, those along the Yarra were apoplectic.
How dare he! Who does Sydney think it is!
V’landys had the last laugh.
His genius saw his own event hit all the airwaves and in the process put the Melbourne subconscious on full display.
They are single-mindedly focused, with an almost fortress-like mentality, on defending their events. They don’t like the Everest incursion.
Well, we in Sydney should be just as passionate as Melbournites and just as clever as V’landys.
We must keep the Grand Final.
The financial argument can be made.
Data from the Tourism and Transport Forum shows grand final tourists have spent $108 million in Sydney over the past five grand finals.
More conservative estimates say the NRL grand final injects $20 million into the NSW economy most years. So we’d probably make back the $10 million plus what we’ll need to pay to strike the deal to keep the event.
Let’s not forget that Melbourne, meanwhile, is raking in inordinate amounts of cash every year from its packed event schedule.
The VRC says the Victorian economy pocketed $444 million in gross economic benefits from the Melbourne Cup carnival last year.
They’ll have the President’s Cup golf in December and in doing so have opened the door to a possible visit by Donald Trump.
Whether you like Trump or hate him, a Presidential visit for a spot of golf is no small matter and will see Melbourne’s event beamed across the world.
The Australian Open and the Australian Grand Prix close out the blockbuster events calendar for our southern rival.
All of this is money and glory NSW is missing out on.
While we’re at it, we should take a leaf from the Melbourne book on public holidays too. Is there any greater way to celebrate an event than scheduling one of our public holiday on top of it?
This Melbourne fighting spirit can be traced back to the 1990s when they shamelessly wrestled the F1 from South Australia.
It was thought at the time that the move was revenge for bitter Victorians mad that they’d lost a bid to host the 1996 Olympics only to have Sydney win 2000 Games.
Sydney, in contrast, basically won the glory of the 2000 Games then let the city rot for the next decade.
The Liberals have spent the subsequent years trying to build infrastructure and roads to catch up again but our approach to big events has been one of complacency.
Which ever way you cut it, Sydney is missing out.
If Premier Berejiklian lets the grand final slip between her fingers, the city will pay.