Cautious lifting of sports crowd limits across Australia
- Written by News Co Media
Certain states in Australia are starting to allow more people to attend large-scale sporting events such as the start of the Australian Rules Football AFL tournament. Last week saw the authorities in Victoria making plans to permit up to 50,000 people to attend the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
This came as a result of a drop in the number of Covid-19 restrictions in the southern state. Prior to this, Victoria had implemented a snap five-day lockdown due to a virus outbreak at a hotel. It is hoped that other states in Australia could follow suit in line with the gradual easing of social distancing restrictions.
Learning from the Australian Open
While Australia has been largely spared the devastating effects that have brought much of the rest of the planet to a grinding halt, it has had to be cautious in how it hosts major sporting events. Nowhere was this better seen than at the Australian Open. This saw the players jetting in to be ‘held captive’ in their hotel rooms while the play had to be delayed by a number of days due to sudden outbreaks of Covid-19 cases.
Even when the tennis tournament managed to proceed, things didn’t exactly go according to plan. There was a ban on crowds for five days as the state of Victoria went into a snap lockdown to counter a sudden spike in virus cases.
Eventually the Australian Open tournament was allowed to progress as normal. This meant that sports fans could plan their day by reading Betfair reviews to see what tennis odds were available, and then up to 30,000 fans were allowed into the arena at a time. While this was still only at 50% of the full capacity, it was heartening to see that a full-scale sporting competition could still go ahead despite the exceptional circumstances.
How will sports fans adapt to the new conditions?
It has been nearly one year since Victoria’s state officials suspended sport as a result of the pandemic. At the time it seemed almost unimaginable that people might ever get back to the normal way of watching sporting events. But once the AFL season is underway, it’s expected that the 100,000-seat Melbourne Cricket Ground will be half-full for the sporting action.
Prior to this, there had been crowds of up to 30,000 allowed in to the MCG to see the Australia cricket team take on India for the Boxing Day Test match. Plus, once Melbourne’s Docklands stadium allowed up to 28,000 people to attend for the AFL preseason matches, it was clear just how much people had missed seeing the sporting action in real-life.
Much of the AFL season of 2020 had to be played in the eastern states of Australia as a result of an extended lockdown in Victoria. But with the virus appearing to be under control, the state authorities have felt that the time is right to lift the sporting restrictions.
This came in conjunction with a gradual lifting of other measures implemented to tackle the virus. As a result, people would no longer be required to wear masks indoors, and there was also a lessening of the limits on how many people could gather in homes and public areas.
The success of the scheme ultimately depends on how the virus can be kept in check. All sporting bodies are having to improvise according to government regulation and major events like the Australian Grand Prix have been postponed to take place much later in the year.
Plus with the news that the remaining T20 cricket games between New Zealand and Australia will take place behind closed doors, it’s a reminder for sports fans that there can’t be any assumptions that things will automatically get better.
But on the whole, Australia is managing to show the rest of the world what could be achieved in terms of allowing fans to finally come back to sporting events. Similar schemes were briefly tried in other countries such as the UK, but restrictions quickly came back into place due to a spike in virus cases. All of which means that the coming weeks will be critical for the success of attended sport in Australia.