Macquarie Point stadium business case is ‘gobbledygook’, music promoter says

The business case for the proposed Macquarie Point stadium was “a house of cards” built on meaningless gobbledygook, uninformed guesswork and wishful thinking, a music promoter has told MPs.

Concept drawings of a new design for a Macquarie Point Stadium by the Stadia Precinct Consortia led by Dean Coleman and Paul Lennon. Picture: SolutionsWon

The business case for the proposed Macquarie Point stadium was “a house of cards” built on meaningless gobbledygook, uninformed guesswork and wishful thinking, a leading music promoter has told MPs.

“As a business case, it’s a basket case,” Charles Touber told the Public Accounts Committee Tasmanian Government’s Proposed Hobart Stadium Feasibility Planning Process on Tuesday morning.

“This would have to be one of the most bewildering and unworthy major projects I’ve seen the Tasmanian Government ever embark on. I thought it was a joke when it first came out,” Mr Touber said.

The state government has agreed to construct the $715m stadium at Macquarie Point as part of the deal with the AFL to establish a Tasmanian team.

The business case used to back the stadium includes the assumption it would each year host three major international acts with 30,000 attendees and five events attracting 15,000 people each.

Charles Touber.

Mr Touber said he didn’t place much stock in the modelling being used to justify the stadium proposal: “it’s nonsense,” he said, noting it was the hard truth of demographics and economics that the state couldn’t attract major events.

“It’s not a business model, it’s just wishful thinking,” he said.

“It doesn’t take very long to walk through why it is just logistically and mathematically not possible.

“It’s not viable unless we inflate our population by two million people or something like that. “It’s a supply and demand curve. We just haven’t got enough supply: people to go to the shows.”

He said regional stadiums tended to struggle: “It’s just going to be a drain on state resources,” he said.

“A good comparison is Townsville, which has a population similar to ours … it’s always also regarded as a gateway or capital of Northern Queensland.

“Now that stadium opened in 2020 with very high expectations, especially they wanted entertainment and they’ve had the grand total, in four years, of one show.

“I think it’s instructive to listen to the very sage words of the mayor Jenny Hill, who was reported to have said that the lack of shows has been a source of bitter disappointment to her.”

An artists impression of the Macquarie Point stadium.

Mr Touber said he didn’t see how the state was going to attract acts to Tasmania, with fierce competition, tight time frames and relatively small audiences.

“Now the projection there is a very, very rosy 96,000 people over six concerts. Now they say they’ve conferred with experts. I don’t know who they conferred with,” he said.

“I don’t know what data they’ve got about ticket sales. I don’t think they’ve got any data.

“They are talking about wanting concerts of 25,000 people, I can tell you now that the biggest concert in Tasmania this century was AC/DC at the Domain and they got 16,000 people which I think is about the limit of what this population base can supply.

“They’re suggesting that you that you’d get six of these AC/DC concerts — which has happened once this century … and that’s going to happen every year.”

He noted the concert lost money.