Sydney Olympic Park is an internationally recognised place with world-class events, venues, parklands and a great place to live and work, built on its Olympic legacy in a sustainable way.

Legacy is…

For Sydney Olympic Park, legacy is about transformation – from urban wasteland to athletes’ village and the best ever athletes’ Games to a sustainable vibrant super lifestyle city. Sydney Olympic Park is a unique world class Olympic legacy that has been developed into Australia’s ‘home of sport’ – a precinct founded, developed, and inspired by sport, its ideals, character and the Australian sporting spirit.

What’s next?
The Sydney Olympic Park Master Plan 2030 Review provides a blueprint for future urban development within the Park, providing for more than 34,000 jobs, 10,000 new dwellings – 23,500 residents, 5,000 students and 100,000m2 of retail while retaining major-event capability for up to 250,000 patrons and improving access to the 430 hectares of Parklands. The Plan sets out a commitment to achieve the highest possible rating of 6 -Star Green Star Communities. Sydney Olympic Park Authority is also working with Smart Cities Council to become the first Olympic precinct to gain Smart City accreditation. The Green Star and Smart City accreditation will: create conditions for greater sustainability outcomes, gather real time intelligence, protect the natural and the built environments, engage community, transform services and quality of life for everyone and implement sustainable planning of communities across governance, liveability, economic prosperity, environment and innovation.

Promote a healthy and active lifestyle

The Sydney Olympic Park Authority collaborates with it’s over 50 sporting organisations including state and national sporting bodies to deliver community participation programs. These sports partnerships with local sporting associations and the Park’s 12 home sports team and athlete ambassadors help inspire participation in a range of sports programs including 4,000 children participating in one of Australia’s largest swim schools, programs in football, gymnastics, basketball, cricket, AFL, rugby league, netball and over 500,000 schools students participating in athletics and swimming carnivals annually.

Increasing Sports participation is a multifaceted objective. The Sydney Olympic Park combines high-level facilities and a great choice of activities. The creation of open green space builds on the health and wellbeing of the community all year round both for the local population and for sports people. The environmental and cultural history of the Park is promoted through the Authority’s education programs.

The Authority has also developed a unique program for residents workers and students at Sydney Olympic Park to have access to programs events and concerts called Lifestyle. The Lifestyle program promotes lunch time activities and sports competitions.

The Authority has also facilitated the creation of Australia’s first sports technology incubator, the Sydney Sports Incubator which drives innovation in health wellbeing and high performance sport. Sydney Olympic Park is an innovation hub and welcomes business and R&D activities focusing on developing these technologies. The Sydney Sports  Incubator has been established to nurture sports start-ups and spearhead innovation in sports business and health.

Promote the City by leveraging its affiliation with the Olympic Movement

Sydney Olympic Park is Australia’s home of sport, a sports hub but it is also a wold class destination for living, working and studying.

Education is a key program for the Park. This includes delivery of Technical Tours for future Olympic and World Cup host precincts. Visitors are invited to go behind the scenes of Sydney Olympic Park, the site of the “best Games ever”. With the release of the Sydney Olympic Park Masterplan (Review) 2030, visitors can hear about how this world-class sport and entertainment precinct has grown into a thriving residential and commercial centre. They learn about corporate governance and strategic planning; urban planning and development; business development; and community engagement. Such technical tours are ideal for professional and conference groups; university study groups; domestic and international business delegations; and government agencies

The Sydney Olympic Park Authority offers a unique case study of sustainable urban development all driven by hosting the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Another key initiative of the Sydney Olympic Park Authority’s education team is the delivery of global video conferencing to international students during the hosting of major sporting events that foster positive cultural exchange.

Last but not least, Sydney showcases legacy in dedicated places. Sydney Olympic Park is home to the biggest collection of large-scale site-specific urban art in a single precinct in Australia. With more than 50 pieces of public art and urban cultural features spread across this multi-faceted site, the collection provides a unique record of the evolving cultural history of Sydney Olympic Park. As well as works relating to the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games, there are also pieces that evoke the early industrial uses of the site.

Sydney Olympic Park generates in excess of $1B worth of economic activity annually. The total number of events held at the Park for 2017-18 was 5,566. The number of visitors to Sydney Olympic Park in 2017-18 was 10.5 million including ticketed entertainment attendance increased by 355,000 visitors (+37%) – the main driver was concert attendance which was up 305,000 visitors.

In 2017-18 there were 51 days when there were more than 30,000 event patrons in the Park which is the same number as 2016-17. Sports based events eclipsed business events as the main type of event held across the Park in 2016-17. This difference has increased in 2017-18, with sports based events now comprising 47% of total events and business events now comprising 37%.

The Sydney Olympic Park based community grew in 2017-18 to 23,810 people, an increase of 1% on 2016-17. This is comprised of 17,500 workers; 4,450 residents; and 1,860 students.

Sydney Olympic Park Authority manages the Sydney Olympic Park precinct and has implemented the collation and reporting of visitor statistics on an annual basis in order to support attracting new investment and new business; planning services and facilities;  reporting to State Government and other key stakeholders; tracking market penetration of campaigns; and understanding relevance of Sydney Olympic Park to different markets.

As for the methodology applied, visitor data collection from venues and relevant Sydney Olympic Park Authority staff is completed either via a template or from the venues’ internal reporting systems. All data is then consolidated into a standard format. The information collected includes total number of visitors and the number of events held by purpose of visit segments.

The reporting of the number of workers, residents and students is based on the five yearly ABS Census, an intermediary Workforce Survey specific to Sydney Olympic Park and internal information from Property Development as relevant developments are complete.

The hosting of the Olympic Games almost 20 years ago has allowed the NSW Government to create a global major events sports precinct.

The selection of a central clustered precinct certainly benefited the Sydney 2000 Games delivery but also provided an investment incentive for Government to embark on the largest remediation project of its kind at the Sydney Olympic Park site.

The focus of our challenges moving forward as an Olympic precinct is the increasing costs associated with venue and precinct maintenance. This is being addressed with the creation of new and upgraded sporting facilities which include Olympic and non-Olympic sports that are popular in Australia. In collaboration with national and state sporting organisations  SOPA and the NSW Government have been able to deliver and commit to sports facility projects including, BMX Racing, Mountain X, skateboarding and ‘centres of excellence’ for popular sports in Australia such as netball, rugby league and AFL and upgrades to sports fields, indoor sports halls, hockey, tennis, athletics and swimming facilities.

The Sydney Olympic Park Authority has been successful in collaborating with each sport to drive both community sport and top level sport in Sydney Olympic Park in a sustainable way. The strong sports use of facilities has been a key aspect of the Park’s success. Use drives investment and upgrades and new facility development.

Identifying the right location for venues is key for post-Games era
The central model for the location of most venues in a central sports precinct certainly worked for Sydney’s Games. It provided the impetus for the largest land remediation project of its kind. Having acknowledged this each city that is contemplating hosting will have different considerations around the legacy benefits and how they may suit different models of delivery, but in Sydney’s case the central model worked.

As the Park now evolves into the ‘central city’ as the NSW Government’s Greater Sydney Commission planning agency refers to the Park. The next phase of significant housing, entertainment commercial facilities are planned which will all be linked with light rail/metro and direct connections to the eastern CBD and Sydney’s planned 2nd airport in the west of the city.

Identification of the right facility delivery model to suit both current and future growth is fundamental. Decisions need to balance with event needs and future legacy and planning needs to allow a city to achieve a sustainable outcome and a lasting legacy such as Sydney Olympic Park.

Focusing on your strengths to deliver the best legacy outcome
Sydney Olympic Park has rich biodiversity which included 400 native plant species and over 200 native vertebrate animal species. It includes three endangered ecological communities, over 180 species of native bird, 7 species of frog, 10 species of bat, 15 species of reptiles and native fish species. This high species diversity and abundance in the geographical centre of a large and modern city contributes to Sydney Olympic Park’s high ecological, aesthetic and educational values.

Sydney Olympic Park’s once-degraded wetland and terrestrial ecosystems underwent extensive restoration works during the late 1900s in what was the largest land remediation exercise ever undertaken in Australia.

The high profile of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games ‘Green Games’ provided a strong social driver for fast–tracking these works and led to their integration with ecologically sustainable development initiatives occurring as part of the Games development.

The bid for the Games had included a set of environmental guidelines for implementation by host cities (Sydney 2000 Bid Limited 1993) based on sustainability principles adopted at the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit. They included commitments to the preservation and protection of natural ecosystems and endangered species, as well as energy and water conservation, waste minimization, resource conservation and prevention of pollution.

Today the Park work’s with all key sports stakeholders to achieve in partnership from community participation to top level sport. The Park has become an inspiration for tomorrow’s athletes as they engage and watch the top level athletes train and play in Sydney Olympic Park. The below ‘Sports Network Model’ highlights the many dimensions of the Park’s unique sports ecosystem that inspires sports participation.

Sports Network Model
Inspiring participation!