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MELBOURNE: It is midday Sunday in Melbourne and the trams are
crammed with Aussie Rules football fans wearing their team colors,
sitting beside rival supporters with little more than a good-natured
ribbing.
Some 100,000 footy fans stream into the enormous
amphitheater of the Melbourne Cricket Ground—known locally simply
as “The G”—where the most fiercely loyal spectators position
themselves behind the goals waving flags and streamers.
The match day atmosphere even permeates the
city’s Queen Victoria Market where a gruff-voiced butcher cuts his
prices as kick-off approaches, imploring customers: “Come on
ladies and gents, we’ve got to get off to the footy!”
In a nation where sport is hard-wired into the
psyche from birth, Melbourne embraces its games with a passion that
even other Australians regard as close to obsession.
SportBusiness International magazine this year
voted it “ultimate sports city” for the second consecutive year,
ahead of 24 other cities including London, Paris, Los Angeles, Tokyo
and archrival Sydney.
Melbourne’s line up of major fixtures was
cited as a reason for the award. The city is home to the Australian
Open Grand Slam tennis, a Formula One Grand Prix, the Melbourne Cup
horse race, cricket’s Boxing Day Test and the Australian Rules
Grand Final.
In recent years, the Victoria state capital has
also hosted the Commonwealth Games and the International Swimming
Federation or FINA world swimming championships, building on a
legacy that stretches back to the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
This translates into big money in an age where
sport is an international commodity, with the Victorian government
estimating the events attract 230,000 overseas visitors and pump
more than a billion dollars ($960 million) into the economy
annually.
Firms based in Melbourne, Australia’s second
biggest city with around 3.75 million people, have also found a
niche using their experience to advise cities across Asia on hosting
major sporting events.
“Victorian firms in particular have been able
to capitalize on their recent experiences with the Melbourne
Commonwealth Games when pitching for business internationally,”
state Premier John Brumby said on a visit to Beijing this year,
where more than 30 Victorian companies have Olympic-related
contracts.
Other sporting events where organizers have
tapped into Melbourne’s sporting know-how include the Delhi 2010
Commonwealth Games, the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China and the
2009 Southeast Asian Games in Laos.
-- AFP
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