[NRL] Stadium investment needed to save Sydney clubs

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the new Stadium upgrades are essential for the preservation of Sydneys NRL clubs, as well as the growth of attendances in the code.\

“My strong view is that suburban grounds, particularly in rugby league’s case, will probably kill one or maybe even two franchises if we don’t make the transition to a larger network [of stadiums],” Ayres said at a Sydney FC in Business function on the eve of the A-League season.

 

“The truth is that crowds have been roughly the same for two decades,” Smith said. “In part that is because we haven’t grown the base … in part it is because our infrastructure is just not up to it.

 

“If you are trying to grow your crowds, the suburban stadiums just don’t work. They bring the hard-core fans but they haven’t got the transport infrastructure and they are not an experience that necessary is attractive to the softer fans, so until the stadium strategy really pulls through then it is quite difficult to substantially change the numbers and history tells us that.”