John MacDonald: Is One NZ stadium enough for Christchurch?

Author: John MacDonald,
Publish Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2026, 12:21pm

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The naysayers will be loving the admission from One NZ Stadium bosses that the number of concerts booked in so far isn’t what they’d been hoping for.

I think it’s fair to say that we’d all hoped for more than what’s confirmed so far. Robbie Williams in November and the Foo Fighters in January.

The naysayers will be loving it because they’ll say it proves their point that spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a stadium was always going to be a waste of money.

That there’s no shortage of stadiums around the world that have become the proverbial white elephant, pointing down the road to Dunedin as an example.

You're not going to hear me saying that. Because I have always been, and will remain, a big supporter of One NZ Stadium.

And, instead of bagging Venues Ōtautahi, the council agency which runs the stadium and other venues around town, I’m asking whether we need One NZ Stadium as well as the Wolfbrook Arena.

Caroline Harvie-Teare, who is the chief executive of Venues Ōtautahi, has told The Press that events at the stadium have been more sport-heavy than initially expected.

There have been five sold-out Crusaders games, the Super Rugby Super Round, the Warriors, the All Blacks. And there’s a lot more sports events booked in too.

Concerts at the stadium, though? Well, it’s been a bit quieter on that front.

We had the big opening concert with Six60. Robbie Williams is doing his sold-out show in November. And the Foo Fighters are here in January.

And that’s it.

Meanwhile, at Wolfbrook Arena, since the stadium opened in March, we’ve had the likes of Jimmy Barnes and Split Enz and others. And coming up at the arena we’ve got Bryan Adams, Westlife and Stan Walker. Apparently, another show at Wolfbrook is going to be announced in the next few weeks.

Venues Ōtautahi runs all three main concert venues in town: the stadium, Wolfbrook Arena and the Town Hall.

The stadium’s concert capacity is 36,000. Wolfbrook Arena’s capacity is 9,000. And the main auditorium in the Town Hall has room for up to 2,500 people sitting and standing for a concert.

So do we need all of them? Could we do away with Wolfbrook Arena and have a lot more concerts at the stadium?

We kind of could. Because the new stadium can be closed off to create a smaller venue. They’ve got this curtain set-up, which allows them to close off parts of the stadium and, when they do that, it takes the capacity down to about 15,000 people.

But going from the Wolfbrook Arena, with room for 9,000 people, to the scaled-back arena within the stadium, which has a capacity of 15,000, that is still a big jump.

Consider too that, with the Parakiore Sport and Recreation Centre now open on Moorhouse Ave, do we still need the arena?

The arena has been where the Mainland Tactix have played most of their home netball games. They had a pre-season game this year at Parakiore so, perhaps, they could do that on a permanent basis.

But for me, when I balance it all up, I think we do need the stadium and Wolfbrook Arena. It would be easy to look at the lack of stadium concerts and say the arena is the reason. That we have two venues competing against each other. But I think we need both.

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