Stadium Australia

Stadium Australia, known for sponsorship reasons as ANZ Stadium, formerly Telstra Stadium, is a multi-purpose stadium located in the Sydney Olympic Park, in Sydney, Australia. The stadium, which in Australia is sometimes referred to simply as the "Olympic Stadium", was completed in March 1999 at a cost of A$690 million to host the 2000 Summer Olympics. Every year since the stadium was built, the New South Wales rugby league team's home games in the State of Origin series have been played there. Also since then the stadium has since hosted the annual National Rugby League grand final. ANZ Stadium also hosted the 2003 Rugby World Cup finals and Bledisloe Cup matches as well as regular Sydney Swans and Greater Western Sydney Giants AFL matches.The stadium was originally built to temporarily hold 110,000 spectators, making it the largest Olympic Stadium ever built as well as the largest stadium in Australia. In 2003 reconfiguration work was completed to shorten the north and south wings, and install movable seating. These changes reduced the capacity to 83,500 for a rectangular field and 82,500 for an oval field (making it the second largest stadium in Australia, after the Melbourne Cricket Ground). Awnings were also added over the north and south stands, which allows most of the seating to be undercover. The stadium was also engineered along sustainable lines for example with the low use of steel in the roof structure in comparison to the Olympic stadiums of Athens and Beijing.