Multi-purpose Stadium - Outside North America

Outside North America

The idea of a sharp difference between a multi-purpose stadium and a single-sport stadium is less important outside of North America, since in most countries stadiums that are constructed with association football (soccer) in mind are easily able to accommodate rugby, athletics (track and field), or other sports with a similar sized playing field. For example, any large stadium in most of Latin America, part of Asia, most of Africa, or continental Europe is likely to be used mostly for soccer. The majority of the largest stadia in the world were built for either association football or American football.

The regions where other outdoor sports can draw numbers comparable to association football or American football are limited. They include: baseball in Japan and the Spanish Caribbean; cricket in England, Australia, the Anglophone Caribbean, and the Indian subcontinent; rugby (union or league) in Wales, England, South Africa, New Zealand, Fiji, and parts of Australia and France; Aussie rules football in Australia; bandy in Russia and Scandinavia; and Gaelic games in Ireland. However even in these areas the amount of compromise needed to accommodate multiple sports varies considerably. Most outdoor team sports have a rectangular playing field, but cricket and Aussie rules fields are rounded, while baseball is played in a diamond. This makes them much harder to accommodate within a rectangular-shaped stadium. Likewise, accommodating athletics (track and field), such as for an Olympic games, means constructing a rounded 400m track around the infield. This often means the sports simply find it easier to play in separate stadia. In the case of Ireland, grounds built for Gaelic games can accommodate soccer and the rugby codes without modification, except for the physical goals; the pitch is both longer and wider than that of soccer or either rugby code. However, opposition to those sports within large parts of the Gaelic games community, most notably manifested in GAA Rule 42, means that soccer and rugby clubs have generally had to play in separate grounds.

True multi-sport facilities, where teams from a variety of sports use the same stadium as their home ground, exist outside North America in a few cases, most of those smaller stadiums. A handful are notable for having 60,000 seats or more. Melbourne Cricket Ground and ANZ Stadium host cricket, Australian rules football, and association football, and ANZ Stadium also hosts several major rugby league events. Wembley Stadium in London, Stade de France near Paris, and Millennium Stadium in Cardiff are not the permanent homes to any club teams, but are used primarily for international competitions and major tournament finals, mostly for association football, but also for rugby, and the opening and closing ceremonies of multi-sport events such as the 2012 Summer Olympics. In South Africa, Soccer City and Ellis Park Stadium have hosted rugby union and soccer, while Moses Mabhida Stadium has hosted soccer and cricket. Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Kochi in India hosts cricket and association football. Eden Park in New Zealand hosts rugby union and cricket. Westpac Stadium in Wellington, NZ hosts rugby union, rugby league, cricket, football, and is due to host Australian rules football in 2013.

The architects Arup cited history that a rarely used athletics track does not work with football, such as the Stadio delle Alpi and the Munich Olympic Stadium, with both Juventus and Bayern Munich moving to new stadiums less than 40 years after inheriting them. The delle Alpi's design was criticised as it left spectators exposed to the elements and the long distance between the stands and the pitch resulting in poor visibility. This was because the athletics track, which was seldom used, was constructed around the outside of the pitch, while views from the lower tier were also restricted due to the positioning of advertising boardings. These factors contributed to low attendances; only 237 spectators showed up for the Coppa Italia home match against Sampdoria in the 2001–02 season, while in the 2005–06 season the average attendance was 35,880. Manchester City Council wished to avoid creating a white elephant, so to give the stadium long-term financial viability, extensive work was carried out to convert the City of Manchester Stadium from a field and track arena to a football stadium. The old Estádio da Luz was demolished so that the football-specific replacement could be built on the site as part of Portugal's bid to host Euro 2004. German stadiums such as the AWD-Arena, Commerzbank-Arena, Mercedes-Benz Arena, RheinEnergieStadion, Volksparkstadion, and Zentralstadion also underwent reconstruction/renovation by removing the running track to become football-only venues, several of these projects were done in preparation for the 2006 FIFA World Cup.