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Abstract
Before 1973, cricket and Australian Football used the Adelaide Oval for major games during their respective seasons. Football’s popularity as a spectator sport prompted its organising body to seek to build an improved stadium, but cricket authorities controlled the asset and acted to maintain its specialised character as a cricket ground. A case study of how the gains from a shared capital good are negotiated when asset controllers and users have different objectives is provided. A series of counterfactual scenarios based on football remaining at the Oval is constructed from archival sources and their outcomes projected based on data in financial reports.
Acknowledgements
For comments on earlier drafts of this article, we are grateful to Jeff Borland, Luc Borrowman, Neil Carter, Tim Hatton, Sumner La Croix, Rod Maddock, Gary Magee, David Merrett, Richard Pomfret, David Prentice, Martin Shanahan, Simon Ville, and John Wilson. We thank John Althorp, Robert Oatey and the late Don Roach for information and assistance.
Notes
1. Vamplew, Pay Up; Wright and Zammuto, “Creating Opportunities.”
2. Mandle, “Games People Played.”
3. In the 1870s, The Oval, home of Surrey County Cricket Club, hosted the first FA Cup Final and the first England–Scotland soccer international. Sheffield Wednesday Football Club was formed by members of the Wednesday Cricket Club in 1867 and played at Bramall Lane, home of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, until 1887. After Sheffield Wednesday moved to its own ground, the Bramall Lane Ground Committee created a new club, Sheffield United in 1892, to maintain revenue from football. Derby County Football Club was founded by members of the Derbyshire County Cricket Club in 1884 and the two clubs shared a ground until 1895. Notts County and Northampton Town played at county cricket grounds for lengthy periods. See Inglis, Football Grounds. Several English soccer and rugby (union and league) clubs continue to share stadiums.
4. Gershman, Diamonds. In 1970, 19 of the 24 teams in Major League Baseball shared a stadium with a National Football League team.
5. The Oakland Coliseum remains the only stadium shared between Major League Baseball and National Football League teams.
6. Szymanski and Zimbalist, National Pastime, 130–131. Genoa, Milan, Munich, Rome and Turin are the notable exceptions, where long-term ground-sharing arrangements between soccer clubs have been maintained.
7. Lesser and Zerbe, “A Practitioner's Guide”; Niehans, A History.
8. Myerson and Satterthwaite, “Efficient Mechanisms.”
9. Hignell, “Crowds, Clouds.”
10. Vamplew, Pay Up, 87–91; Wright and Zammuto, “Creating Opportunities.”
11. Sandiford and Vamplew, “The Peculiar Economics”; Vamplew, Pay Up, 87–99.
12. Walvin, The People’s Game.
13. Dixon, Garnham and Jackson, “Shareholders and shareholding.”
14. Inglis, Football Grounds.
15. Inglis, Engineering Archie.
16. Inglis, Football Grounds.
17. Batchelder, Pavilions in the Park, 154–158.
18. Cain and Haddock, “Similar Economic Histories.”
19. Hynds and Smith, “The Demand.”
20. Cashman, Australian Cricket Crowds; Bhattacharya and Smyth, “The Game is Not the Same.”
21. A post-season playoff tournament, culminating in a ‘grand final’ to determine the premier (champion) team, is a standard feature of Australian Rules leagues at all levels.
22. Sumerling, The Adelaide Park Lands.
23. Downer, 100 Not Out.
24. John Althorp, South Adelaide Football Club historian, personal communication.
25. The competition was suspended in 1916–8. The SANFL also used the Adelaide Oval for interstate matches.
26. Quoted by Downer, 100 Not Out, 157.
27. “The rise of Adelaide football.” Advertiser (Adelaide) 13 July 1908, 7.
28. Cashman, Australian Cricket Crowds.
29. Williams, The Making, 425–428.
30. Vamplew, Australians, 383–385. The number of days of first-class cricket was 14% higher than the number of days of SANFL football during these years.
31. “’Disgraceful’. Men’s toilet facilities at the Adelaide Oval are hopelessly inadequate.” News (Adelaide), 1 February 1966.
32. Copy of rough minutes of Finance and Properties meeting – 16/12/68, Adelaide City Council Archives (ACCA), Waymouth St, Adelaide, file no. F338/J.
33. Football 1959. Copy for information of Town Clerk. ACCA, unnumbered file.
34. SANFL suburban grounds were typically built on restricted sites and offered small areas of grandstand seating. As at the Adelaide Oval, most spectators watched from open grass embankments. Between 1958 and 1978, seven of the 10 SANFL clubs set home ground attendance records. A 1955 end-of-season exhibition match between the SANFL and VFL premiers, played under lights at Norwood Oval, drew an official crowd of 16,400, but an unknown number of spectators gained entry by tearing down fences outside the ground. Age (Melbourne), 6 October 1955. The official record attendance at Norwood Oval, 20,280, was set in 1971.
35. Vamplew, Australians, 383.
36. “Adelaide Oval – ‘Primitive Facilities’.” Advertiser, 7 October 1965.
37. Town Clerk to SACA, 29/9/1955; SACA to Town Clerk, 11/11/1955. ACCA, file no. 338B 22/1/54 – 28/7/59.
38. Town Clerk to SACA, 28/9/1950, ACCA, file no. 338B; “Parklands Tragedy,” News, 9 September 1952.
39. Note for the Town Clerk: Adelaide Oval – history of negotiations in the period 1960/1962, 31/10/68. ACCA, file no. 338J.
40. Football 1959. Copy for information of Town Clerk. ACCA, unnumbered file.
41. Abbott, “A Long-term View.”
42. “League Objects to SACA Action,” Advertiser, 21 July 1954.
43. SACA, Annual Report 1965-6, p. 317.
44. Wright and Zammuto, “Creating Opportunities.”
45. “Rough minutes of meeting of ACC Finance and Property Committee” ACCA, file no. 338G, 2/5/1966.
46. “Copy of rough minutes: Finance and Properties meeting 16/12/68.” ACCA, file no. F388/J.
47. Bradman to Brebner, 31/10/1968, ACCA, file no. F338/J; “Brief outline of possible arrangement between SACA and SANFL for stand on northern mound,” ACCA, file no. 338M2, 9/12/1966; H.E. Clamp (SANFL) to M.V. Millard (SACA), 2/3/1967, ACCA, file no. F338/J. Australia’s currency was decimalised in 1966. A SANFL membership scheme would have allowed free entry to South Adelaide home games, thus reducing the incentive for people to buy South Adelaide club memberships. The SANFL would have had to compensate South Adelaide for the loss of membership income, but as the membership scheme did not proceed beyond the conceptual stage, these details were not worked out.
48. SANFL submissions at Conference with SACA 7th August 1967 ACCA, file no. 338/M/3.
49. SACA Reply to Submission of SANFL 1 Sept 1967, ACCA, file no. 338/M/3; Bradman to Brebner, 29/11/1967, ACCA, file no. F338/J; SACA to SANFL – Reply to proposals regarding the Adelaide Oval, ACCA, file no. ACC 338M/3, 23/4/1968; K. Butler, “Stir on Oval lease.” Advertiser, 13 September 1968.
50. Don Roach, interviewed by Author 1.
51. SANFL to SACA. ACCA, file no. ACC 338M2, 9/7/69.
52. Calculated from data in Hornsey, Football Times Yearbook 1983, 64; Vamplew, Australians, 383.
53. Don Roach, interviewed by Author 1.
54. Copy of rough minutes of the Finance and Properties Committee meeting held 4/11/68, ACCA, file no. F388/J.
55. Cashman, Australian Cricket Crowds, 284.
56. This is a feature that distinguishes the Australian Rules business model from other sports leagues. The VFL opened its own stadium, VFL Park, in 1970. The Australian Football League (AFL), created by the national expansion of the VFL in the 1980s, maintains ground-sharing agreements with major stadiums in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Brisbane, and continues to schedule games between Victorian-based teams at neutral venues based on likely demand for match attendance. The AFL’s unbalanced scheduled is manipulated to allow key rivalries to be repeated, with the objective of maximising attendance and viewing. Lenor, Lenten and McKenzie, “Rivalry Effects.”
57. Calculated from data in Hornsey, Football Times Year Book 1984, 58–59.
58. Calculated using Reserve Bank of Australia Inflation Calculator. http://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualDecimal.html.
59. Bradman retired as SACA President in 1973, but continued to serve as a delegate to the Australian Cricket Board. In that capacity he was a key figure in the negotiations that preceded the formation of World Series Cricket. Ironically, Football Park was one of the venues that Kerry Packer used to establish his breakaway competition.
60. L. Jervis, “Football League to Quit Oval.” News, 12 August 1970.
61. See for example ‘Copy of rough minutes: Finance and Properties meeting 4/11/68’, ‘Copy of rough minutes: Finance and properties meeting 16/12/68’, ACCA, file no. F388/J.
62. Schoemaker, “Multiple Scenario Development.”
63. Cashman, Australian Cricket Crowds.
64. Cashman, Australian Cricket Crowds, 71.
65. Wilson and Pomfret, Public Policy, 80–84.
66. The average attendance for AFL games at the Adelaide Oval in 2014 (45,184) was 42% higher than the average for Football Park in 2013. At the time, the SANFL owned the licences for the two Adelaide-based AFL clubs. The distribution of football revenue was such that the SANFL’s financial gain from the move to the Adelaide Oval ($4.5 million) exceeded that of either of the two AFL clubs, Port Adelaide ($4 million) and Adelaide ($3 million). Advertiser, 20 November 2014. In late 2014, ownership of the licences was transferred from the SANFL to the Adelaide Football Club and the Port Adelaide Football Club. In early 2015, a new stadium deal was negotiated with the Stadium Management Authority to increase the two clubs’ share of football revenue. The SACA benefited by being able to admit more members. Member numbers, which stood at 12,500 in 2009, increased to 26,700 in 2014. The SACA’s annual financial surplus increased from $3.2 million in 2013/14 to $4.3 million. T-20 cricket and the hosting of concerts also increased revenue from the stadium. SACA, Annual Report 2014/15.
67. The number of sell-out football games at the Adelaide Oval suggests that demand for watching sport at the stadium continues to be constrained by capacity.