Is Sydney Olympic Park finally heading in the right direction?

• Sydney Olympic Park has inspired many a groan over the year, but getting out to the entertainment hub is starting to look more attractive.
• Niche programming has given Sydney Olympic Park a new lease on life, with events like Sydney Boat Show and Race of Champions.
• Sydney needs a more efficient and practical entertainment hub if it wants to be a world-class city.
• READ MORE: Could Sydney be getting more IMAX screens following the success of IMAX Sydney?

Our main hub for live entertainment deserves better food, better transport, and more things to do.

A local promoter has just announced a huge tour from your favourite musician and you’re beside yourself with joy, feverishly joining any ticket ballots and firing up the group chat to see which one of your mates is available. “Where is it?” they ask; you nervously fill them in on location, knowing that the effort required to get there might be the dealbeaker: “It’s at Sydney Olympic Park…”

There are many major entertainment precincts the world over that feel isolated and aren’t the easiest to get to. Hollywood Park in Los Angeles, where the cutting-edge curved Cosm screen is located, is all the way out in Inglewood, for example.

If you’ve set up base in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica or West Hollywood already, then heading back out towards LAX to see a show makes little sense. Especially in a city where only the brave would dare contend with the pathetically unreliable transit system. All of the sudden, seeing a show at Cosm comes with both transit and convenience costs, adding travel time to the show’s duration so it becomes more of a commitment than you’d want.

Sydney Olympic Park isn’t an inconvenience, but it’s up there

While saying that Sydney Olympic Park is impossible to get to is a bit too dramatic—it’s only an easy 20-30 minute train ride from the city, a short drive for Western Sydney locals clustered around Parramatta, and often has direct services for big events—it’s not the best-located stadium for such a big, important city. Especially one that’s trying to muscle its way into the same category as Tokyo, New York and London.

Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium, for example, is located in Docklands and is only a short tram ride or walk from the CBD; a show there doesn’t feel like something that’d eat up your entire day, and you can plan better as a result. You can even work in a city dinner before, so grabbing a meal on Flinders Lane and heading over to Marvel’s Stadium straight after isn’t much of a commitment.

Heading out to see a show at Qudos? You might not even have time to grab some dinner outside of Sydney Olympic Park beforehand, so your options will be McDonalds, Oportos, deep fried pub food, and a bunch of greasy food trucks selling pluto pups and salty chips on a stick. The place is like an underfunded, grossly unhealthy Australian country town without the produce-powered cafes and growing seasons.

Getting and out of Sydney Olympic Park is a bit of a pain, but there’s less resistance to it now that the area’s main venues, Accor Stadium and Qudos Bank Arena, are presenting stronger, more diverse programming that speaks to all types of interests. Everyone from Beyonce and Taylor Swift to The Weeknd and Drake have performed at Sydney Olympic Park over the past few years, and the music programming still plays a second fiddle to the behemoth sports events that pop up out there every few weeks.

ENGIE Stadium, which is smaller at is located right by Qudos Bank Arena, is also starting to show more signs to life with diverse programming. Later this year, the 23,500-capacity stadium, typically reserved for sports but sometimes used as part of music festivals, will host household names Mariah Carey and Pitbull as the headliners of Fridayz Live 2025.

Finding purpose with niche interests

But music and sports have always been a big drawcard for Sydney Olympic Park. Another stream for Qudos Bank Arena in particular is starting to emerge with a bigger focus on more niche interests, like boating and motorsports.

It makes sense. Earlier this year, Qudos Bank Arena underwent its biggest temporary transformation to date when it hosted the Race of Champions in March. The Sydney Easter Show may be best known for show bags and overpriced food, but its consistent success is best credited to all the niche interests that it caters to with various exhibitions and domes. Similarly, you shouldn’t be surprised by now if you see kids donning their best Cosplay threads and heading out to massive pop culture events like Supanova, which earlier this year bagged big names like LOST’s Evangeline Lilly, The Walking Dead’s Chandler Riggs and Titanic’s Billy Zane.

Want to see the Sydney Boat Show? Sydney Travel Guide is giving away free tickets to the show.

In just a few weeks, the wider Sydney Showground area will host the brand new Sydney Boat Show with numerous headline attractions for boating enthusiasts, including showcases and sessions with prolific fisherman Andrew “ET” Ettingshausen. Following that, Motor Culture Australia will host Cars & Culture at Sydney Olympic Park, presenting the country’s biggest car show with an expected crowd of at least 12,000 enthusiasts

With Fever also establishing its official Sydney pavilion out in Sydney Olympic Park, designed to host numerous immersive entertainment experiences and refined VR programs, it’s looking like what was once largely considered a once-or-twice-a-year outing for locals is fast becoming the city’s hub of modern entertainment for everyone.

What we’d love to see happen to Sydney Olympic Park

It’s beyond a joke that Sydney’s main live entertainment precinct lacks any sort of culinary punch, and nothing that feels a cut above going out to the local RSL for dinner. Despite some of the biggest stadiums around the world constantly rethinking their food options, with a close-to-home example being Sydney Cricket Ground’s Merivale partnership, both Accor Stadium and Qudos Bank Arena are lacking dramatically when it comes to food and drink. That’s no longer acceptable in a city as ambitious as Sydney.

Transport is another glaring issue, as implied above. Having to change trains at Lidcombe to get to Sydney Olympic Park is such an outdated process, and it’s even more annoying when you’ve just walking out of Qudos Bank Arena at 11pm from a non-sports event and find that there’s no directs back to the city. The longer it takes to get home, the less people still buzzing from their concerts are likely to want keep the night going. And keeping the night going means adding to Sydney’s night-time economy.

Compare this to when Sydney Entertainment Centre existed. That structure, located near Market City in Haymarket, used to pull in some decent names. I’ve seen The Chemical Brothers, JAY-Z, Kings of Leon, Kanye West and Rihanna there before it was shut down in 2015. Seeing these big events on the edge of the CBD meant that you could also “make a night” of it, without committing the entire time to the show.

After travelling extensively around big cities like Chicago, New York City and Tokyo, I think one of many things that clearly make these big cities so exciting is the practicality of them. You can conceivably squeeze in 3-4 big activities and shows throughout the day, as well as visit good restaurants and bars, without running yourself into the ground. If you’ve sandwiched a show at Sydney Olympic Park into your itinerary, then you’ll need to factor in much more than just the duration of said show.

This issue isn’t exclusive to Sydney, but it’s one of the most glaring when you consider the geographic relationship between a CBD and its two major stadiums. The programming at Allianz Stadium in Moore Park, where big-name concerts are still very scarce (the most recent was Travis Scott in October 2024), and not at all frequent enough to solve the issue.

And if we can’t have more concerts at Allianz Stadium, can we at least have a permanent direct train service to Sydney Olympic Park now that the programming is becoming more diverse, frequent and ambitious?

What big events are coming up at Sydney Olympic Park

While accessibility is nowhere near as bad as it used to be, Sydney Olympic Park’s continual glow-up demands the powers that be rethink what getting in and out of the suburb looks like. The last few months of this year are going to be especially big for Sydney Olympic Park with the following events across music, entertainment and sports.

To give you a nice and easy scope of what’s coming, I’ve listed the following events coming up between Qudos Bank Arena, Accor Stadium and Sydney Showgrounds.

• Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live
• Keith Urban
• Tyler, the Creator
• Paul Kelly
• Cirque du Soliel: Corteo
• Kevin Hart
• Sydney Kings 25/26 Season
• Lil’ Baby
• Teddy Swims
• Burna Boy
• Ricky Martin
• Lenny Kravitz
• RUFUS DU SOL
• Justice
• Lewis Capaldi
• Oasis
• AC/DC
• Metallica
• Monster Jam
• NRL 2025 Grand Final
• Lady Gaga
• AFC Women’s Asian Cup
• GWS Giants vs Sydney Swans
• Fridayz Live (Mariah Carey, Pitbull, Wiz Khalifa + more)

Sydney Olympic Park

Where: Sydney Olympic Park NSW 2127.

How to get there

By train: Olympic Park station is on the T7 line, 30 minutes from Central Station and 18 minutes from Parramatta Station. Change at Lidcombe station for services leaving every 10 minutes. Visit Transport NSW for more information.

By car: Use postcode 2127 for route planners. We recommend pre-booking parking before your visit. The pre-book parking system closes at 11:59 pm the day before an event.

By bus: Route 533 runs between Sydney Olympic Park and Chatswood via Rhodes & North Ryde; route 525 runs between Parramatta and Sydney Olympic Park via Newington, and route 526 runs between Burwood and Rhodes Shopping Centre via Strathfield, Sydney Olympic Park precinct and wharf.