More concerts for Eden Park? Government looking into it

Monday, 15 September 2025

The Government will investigate options for allowing more concerts at Eden Park, Sports Minister Chris Bishop says.

The country’s biggest stadium is only allowed to host up to six artists, for a maximum of 12 concerts, each year. There are also restrictions on what days those concerts can be, how long they can go for, and how late the music can play.

For sports, there are also significant restrictions on how many matches can be played at Eden Park. Bishop said the 50,000 seat stadium wasn’t allowed to host more than 25 evening matches each year. The incredibly complex rules meant no games were allowed on Sunday evening, and most matches had to be completed by 9:30pm - except cricket.

“And despite the stadium’s huge capacity, conferences can’t have more than 2000 people,” Bishop added.

He said the Government was looking to change these rules.

“This investigation will be conducted under the new regulation-making power in the Resource Management Act,” he said.

New Resource Management Act powers gave Bishop the power “to remove or modify provisions” where local rules were “negatively impact economic growth, development capacity or employment”.

He indicated he believed the rules were limiting growth and employment.

“Last summer Auckland’s economy received a boost of nearly $32 million from several big concerts. These events created jobs and had local hospitality businesses humming. We want to see more events like these,” he said.

This wasn’t the first time the Government talked about getting more gigs at Eden Park.

At the start of the year, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon singled out the stadium’s restrictions during his state of the nation speech. He said New Zealanders were being forced to fly to Australia to see musicians and events which should be able to come to Auckland.

“There’s always a reason to say no, but if we keep saying no, we’ll keep going nowhere. We need larger ports. We need more concerts,” Luxon said, at the time.

On Monday, he acknowledged the council had made some moves to make it easier for Eden Park to operate. It had moved to allow a dozen concerns, instead of just six.

But he outlined why there were still issues.

He said it was currently impossible for Eden Park to host prime time rugby league, given the time zone different with Australia. “You would need to kick that game off at 9:30pm to make the 7:30pm TV rights. So, you know, these are the sorts of things that we don’t want to miss out on,” he said.

He said the “investigation” would involve opportunities for public feedback, but ultimately it would be up to Cabinet to decide on whether to change the rules.

This investigation was announced during Monday’s post-Cabinet press conference, following an announcement on Sunday from Tourism Minister Louise Upston about adding an extra $70 million to to the Government’s Major Events Fund. That fund could be used to attract big name artists or major sporting events to New Zealand.