The History of Sport in Sydney 

In 2006, 565,898 people attended National Rugby League (NRL) games at Sydney’s Stadium Australia alone. This gives us an idea of how much sport is in the city’s DNA, and it has been this way for a long time. This is why Sydney is a perfect location for GIS’ first Australian full campus.

Sport is embedded in Sydney’s history, with the origins of recreational sport in the city stemming back to the late 1700s, when European settlers brought their love of horseracing and, later, early forms of football to the country’s first sporting hub.  

In 1938, the city hosted the third edition of the British Empire Games (now known as the Commonwealth Games), with over 40,000 attending at the Sydney Cricket Ground – home of GIS Sydney – to watch the opening ceremony.

Australia won their most gold medals (25) during the games, which marked the first major sporting event to be held in the New South Wales capital. The city has built on this rich history ever since.

Most notably, Sydney held the 2000 Summer Olympics, the first to host 300 events. 199 teams competed, and the games were widely seen as the best so far. In fact, in the lead-up to the London 2012 games, Lord Sebastian Coe labelled Sydney 2000 as the “benchmark for the spirit of the games, unquestionably.” 

Today, rugby league is one of the most popular professional sports in the country, and Sydney is the go-to destination for any NRL fans. With eight of the 16 NRL teams based in Sydney, the city is home to the three most successful teams (South Sydney Rabbitohs, Sydney Roosters, and St. George Dragons) since competitive rugby league began in 1908.

That said, the award for the most attended sport in Australia goes to AFL (Australian Football League), with an average crowd of over 37,000 so far in the 2024 season. Both the Greater Western Sydney Giants and the Sydney Swans play in Sydney, the former playing its home games at Accor Stadium and Manuka Oval, and the latter playing at Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), a part of the new GIS Sydney campus.

You (literally) cannot mention Sydney Cricket Ground without talking about another of Sydney’s, and Australia’s, most loved sports. Self-proclaimed as Sydney’s Original Home of Sport, the SCG personifies the history of sport in The Harbour City. Built in 1851, the ground has seen legendary players from Shane Warne to Brian Lara, and its record test match attendance was 58,446 in 1928.

This is just one of the 30 stadiums in the Greater Sydney area with a capacity of over 10,000, which is another indicator of how important sport is to the most populous city in Australia.

Another of the larger stadiums is the Sydney Football Stadium, another home to GIS Sydney and also home to Sydney FC. The stadium held six games during the most recent FIFA Women’s World Cup, played in 2023, 143 years after the city’s first team, the Wanderers, was formally organised.

Despite having only peeked behind the curtains of the history of sport in Sydney, it is easy to see how deeply rooted it is in the city’s culture.

Learn more about GIS’ Sydney campus, a new home of sport in Sydney. 

Article by Zak Anani