Brisbane Broncos chief says filling Victoria Park is Lions’ biggest challenge
The Brisbane Broncos have challenged their cross-code rivals and CEO Dave Donaghy has told his Brisbane Lions counterpart that their biggest challenge will be filling the new 63,000-seat Brisbane Stadium at Victoria Park.
Construction on the new 63,000-seat stadium, which will serve as Brisbane’s Olympic stadium in 2032, was expected to begin later this year, with the Lions in action for the 2033 season.
The Lions’ current record attendance at the Gabba home was 37,478 for the qualifying final against Richmond in 2019.
Speaking alongside Lions chief executive Sam Graham at a lunch of QUT business leaders on Thursday, Donaghy said the Lions’ upcoming stadium upgrade was both an opportunity and a risk.
“This opportunity is also its biggest challenge, which is growth,” Donaghy said.
Donaghy compared Melbourne’s sporting scene to Brisbane’s thriving scene, reflecting on his time at the Melbourne Storm, where he was general manager from 2015 to 2021, to illustrate how stadium size can reveal the limits of fan demand.
“When I was in Melbourne with the Storm, we always said the AFL is the religion in Melbourne and the Storm are a little church on the hill; we just need a few little parishioners to fill AAMI Park,” he said.
“The Lions will have a stadium twice the size.”
Acknowledging that Brisbane does not have the same concentration of professional teams as Melbourne, Donaghy said reduced competition did not guarantee a consistent crowd.
“The advantage the Storm have in Melbourne that these guys don’t have is they only have one team in Brisbane,” he said.
“They don’t have the same competition or challenges.”
Donaghy said the days of seeing the Lions as a foreign code at the heart of rugby league were over.
“I don’t think Lions are a competitor or a challenger brand in a traditional market anymore; they are here,” he said.
“So what matters for them, and for Sam who is leading this, is how they get to the point where performance meets opportunity. [of the] capacity has increased because sometimes it can be a fickle market.”
Graham said although Brisbane was a “one-team city” in AFL terms, on-field success alone would not guarantee growth.
“How do you get more people? [than at] Engage more people through our different channels (AFLW, digitally and other ways) to fill the stadium, that’s our job,” Gabba said.
Graham said despite the Lions’ ups and downs on the field in the AFL over the last 10 years, the club’s membership had reached 75,000.
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