No gigs, no sport as stadium caned
A long wait ahead for events at Wellington’s Sky Stadium
Punters, staff, contractors, the hospitality sector and the city as a whole will feel the pain as the gates are likely to remain locked for many months at Wellington region’s biggest entertainment venue, Sky Stadium.
Chief executive Shane Harmon warned yesterday that the stadium could be without sports crowds for at least six months if the ban on mass gathering continued. And the outlook for concertgoers is even bleaker, at up to 18 months.
Harmon said the Wellington Regional Stadium Trust, which owns and operates the stadium, would miss out on ‘‘several million dollars’’ if the venue was unable to re-open to the public in 2020. And he was not convinced social distancing would be possible, even if patrons were seated apart.
The loss of marquee events is also a huge blow to the capital.
While annual figures are hard to come by, the impact is substantial and clear given that last year’s Eminem concert alone injected $14 million into the local economy and an All Blacks test match about $8m.
‘‘The limit for mass gatherings at level 2 will be 500, but as soon as you add in the teams and everyone that would be there for a work capacity you’re looking at [only] a few hundred straight away,’’ Harmon said.
‘‘If that was lifted and there was still some restrictions of 2 metres, I think it’s feasible in the stadium bowl and the stands, you can certainly allocate seats with gaps.
‘‘The challenge is going to be when you start looking at the entrance to venues, bag search, when the stands empty into the concourse, queueing for food in a relatively narrow concourse and bathrooms etc. That’s when it starts to get tricky.
‘‘There’s probably going to be three phases. Behind closed doors initially,
potentially limited crowds when we do come back on stream and then the third phase is when those major events come back on stream and, if I had to guess, I think it would probably be a 12-18-month process.’’
The last event to be held at Sky Stadium before the country went into lockdown was the A-League football match between Wellington Phoenix and Melbourne Victory on March 15.
Since then 16 event days have been cancelled or postponed due to Covid-19.
Despite some renewed optimism that professional sport could return behind closed doors as New Zealand edges towards alert level 2, Harmon conceded it could be a long time before the stadium was operating at pre-coronavirus levels.
He did not expect the Phoenix to play in Wellington again this season, with the A-League set to resume at a central hub in New South Wales in August, while it could be an 18-month wait for another concert of the magnitude of Eminem or Queen, which could attract around 40,000 punters.
A six-month wait would likely rule out All Blacks tests against Wales and Australia, and non-sporting events, some of which have already been pushed back until later in the year.
‘‘For any stadium venue it is significant and the hard part about all of this is we don’t know what we are planning for,’’ he said.
While sport behind closed doors would offer some respite for broadcasters and some organisations, Harmon said it would provide little financial relief as hire fees accounted for only a small portion of revenue.
‘‘We are a $15 million-a-year business and half of our revenue is derived from event days ... the other is heavily reliant on sponsorship, memberships, box licences etc. Even our non-event revenue like our commuter carpark is nonexistent because people are working from home.’’
‘‘We have cash to tide us over until the second half of the year and have relatively low levels of debt so the six-month outlook is not catastrophic but it starts getting really difficult if you start to look 12-18 months, so I’m hopeful towards the end of the year if we start getting crowds back in it will make a big difference.’’
To help ease the financial pressure, Harmon said the stadium’s 20 staff had accepted 20 per cent pay cuts and were working four-day weeks.
Extension options had been arranged with service providers such as security and catering as well as box licence holders and members for the period the stadium was inactive.
‘‘At the end of this there has to be a stadium, there has to be a facility where our teams can play games, and I’m optimistic that when we come out the other side of this there will be a resurgence in events.’’
WellingtonNZ Events & Experiences General Manager Warrick Dent said Sky Stadium played a valuable role in the local economy. WellingtonNZ had been working closely with the stadium on a number of large events over the next 12 months and was optimistic some would still be held once it was safe to do so.