Events
In 2000, The Westpac Stadium hosted the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. This was the first time the event was hosted outside of Edinburgh, Scotland.
In 2002 during an England versus Black Cap cricket match, director Peter Jackson recorded 30,000 fans chanting in Black Speech for the sound of 10,000 chanting Uruk-hai during the Battle of Helm's Deep in the film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
On 4 March 2006 WWE's first ever New Zealand show, WWE Smackdown Road to Wrestlemania 22 Tour was held at the stadium. 23,875 people were in attendance to witness 9 matches including a triple threat match between Kurt Angle, Undertaker and Mark Henry for the World Heavyweight Championship.
Also in 2006 a concert was held by The Rolling Stones which ended the Australasian leg of its A Bigger Bang World Tour,
On 14 October 2007, Australia defeated New Zealand in the Centenary Test rugby league game. The 58–0 defeat set a new record for the largest loss by the New Zealand national rugby league team.
On 1 December 2007, the stadium hosted an exhibition match between Wellington Phoenix FC and Los Angeles Galaxy. LA Galaxy won 4–1 in front of 31,853 spectators, the largest crowd for non-national football (soccer) match in New Zealand history.
On 17 January 2008 the stadium hosted the first leg of The Police Reunion Tour and over Easter the inaugural two day "Rock2Wgtn" music festival, headlined by Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne. Attendance over the two days was around 50,000.
New Zealand hosted the 2008 FIFA Under-17 Women's World Cup. Six pool matches and two playoff matches were played at the Westpac Stadium. Due to FIFA rules disallowing host stadia to be named after non-FIFA sponsors, the stadium was officially known as "Wellington Stadium" during the event.
The stadium hosted the national team's 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying match on 14 November 2009 against Bahrain. New Zealand won the match 1–0, with a record crowd of 35,194 for a football match in New Zealand.
On 28 January 2010 AC/DC kicked off the Australasian leg of its Black Ice World Tour at the stadium. The concert quickly sold out so a second was scheduled for 30 January. The stadium was also a venue for Bon Jovi's The Circle Tour in 2010.
The stadium hosted eight games during the 2011 Rugby World Cup including two quarterfinal matches.
The St Kilda Football Club, based in Melbourne, Australia, has announced its intention to host five Australian Football League games at the venue from 2013–2015, with the first scheduled for Anzac Day against the Sydney Swans in 2013. It will become the first venue outside Australia to host AFL matches for premiership points.
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Famous quotes containing the word events:
“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The geometry of landscape and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a dynamic element which is cinematising the events of the canvas, translating a posture or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray’s Anatomy.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)