Editorial: A lot is riding on success of nines festival

Fans in Aotea Square welcome players in the NRL Auckland Nines to Auckland. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Opinion

Behaviour of sell-out crowds during the two days will be crucial to city's ambition to attract more big events

This is the weekend when the new Eden Park should come of age. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars in the making, the revamped stadium performed with distinction during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, catering almost seamlessly for repeat enormous crowds. It has done its job since for rugby and cricket and has had crossover code visits on occasion.

Today, however, Eden Park hosts its first big destination event and festival for the city, the two-day Auckland Nines rugby league tournament. This is different from the days of back-to-back test matches on a Saturday and Sunday or the five days of a cricket test. At the Nines, the sport in the middle is only a part of the weekend's attraction. Sellout crowds of 45,000 each day speak more of the appeal of communal eating, drinking and being merry in the summer sun than of fascination with the scoreboard for the 31 matches.

Which is both exciting and worrying for the park, the sport and the city.

The organisers should take a bow. To attract two full houses for an untested event is not only commercially outstanding but a rich endorsement of the Auckland Council's drive to create and support high-profile international, and annual, events in the city. The calendar of attractions in Auckland is growing in appeal, with the Barfoot & Thompson-sponsored annual international triathlon already successfully embedded and Vector Arena's long list of global music stars.

This weekend, we welcome around 6000 visitors to the city from Australia for the Nines and a further 18,000 tickets have been sold to fans in other parts of New Zealand. Media coverage in Australia of the city, as well as the league stars, has already been a feature of the week.

None of these things happen by accident. The Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development agency, Ateed, has played a pivotal role in backing the vision of Nines organisers Duco Events. For Ateed, world-class events attract tourist dollars and stimulate further economic activity. The city is seriously intent on becoming competitive with Australian centres in hosting sporting and cultural events.

How Eden Park and the city's preparations in the streets and suburbs around it perform in the next 48 hours will be vital to that goal. How the fans approach the Nines is the critical factor in that equation. All week the police, organisers and park officials have been emphasising the Nines will not tolerate drunken behaviour inside or outside the park and have sought to contrast that hope with the reality last weekend at the Wellington rugby sevens.

Rugby league has had unfortunate moments with crowd behaviour at Eden Park, notably during a test double-header there in 2010. But the Nines are a different beast - the number of tickets sold necessarily drawing interest from all sports and the event promising more of a summer festival atmosphere. There is a fascination with how the new form of the game will play out. It will not be as loose as rugby sevens, league having shed just four players from its normal 13.

Should Eden Park and Mt Eden cope well, without serious disorder, the stage will be set for Ateed and sports bodies to advance Auckland's claim to further events, new and established elsewhere.