ACT faces big World Cup costs

By DEAN BENSON
TAXPAYERS would be forced to finance significant upgrades to Canberra Stadium, if the city is to have any chance of hosting Football World Cup matches, according to venue management.

Under regulations set out by world football’s governing body, FIFA, all World Cup host venues must have a minimum capacity of 40,000 seats.

This means major redevelopments would need to take place at the Bruce precinct, which now has a capacity of just over 20,000. Such a task would cost around $70 million and would also include work to improve Manuka Oval.

However, the ACT Government is considering other options, including one that lists a brand new purpose-built rectangular stadium as the main feature that would sit alongside the existing Canberra Stadium.

The venue manager at Canberra Stadium, Chris Brooker, insists this would be the preferred option.

“Ideally, we’d like to see the new stadium go ahead,” he said.

However, this would be costly as any new stadium that meets FIFA guidelines would cost $350million and the government is expected cover most of the cost.

“The Ffederal and ACT governments would finance a majority of it,” Mr Brooker said. “But we’d also be hoping for private investors to contribute.”

The stadium currently has two co-tenants under contract – the Canberra Raiders rugby league and the ACT Brumbies rugby union teams.

Both codes would be pushing for a brand new state-of-the-art facility, according to the Brumbies media manager Michael Thomson.

“This sort of capital infrastructure obviously provides an ongoing legacy for the territory and for sports such as ourselves and the other co-tenants of the stadium,” he said. Should Australia succeed in its bid to host either the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cup, the corresponding season for both the Brumbies and Raiders would be severely impacted as the tournament runs for approximately four weeks through June and July.

“The most crucial thing with regard to the World Cup, if it was to come here, is when the stadium ceases to be available for us to play games,” Mr Thomson said. “So we’d have to look at what alternatives exist in terms of where we can play”.

Last year, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that the Government would be contributing around $45 million to Football Federation Australia’s world cup bid.

This move was questioned by a number of the country’s other football codes.

However, the promise of a brand new purpose-built facility would go some way to smoothing over the situation with Canberra’s rugby codes.

But Mr Thomson insists the Brumbies have always supported the bid.

“We’re in support of high-quality sporting events and this is a once in a lifetime,” he said.

Despite the large cost of stadium redevelopments, the move is sure to be supported as host cities are expected to share in more tahn $2 billion of revenue, should the FIFA world cup land in Australia.