The lush team facilities in Christchurch’s new stadium

Tuesday, 19 August 2025

Medical and physio rooms, hydrotherapy pools and large indoor warm-up areas.

Christchurch’s new One New Zealand Stadium at Te Kaha will offer a top-tier experience for sports teams when it opens in April - and a step-up from the Crusaders’ current home base of Apollo Projects Stadium in Addington.

As well as changing rooms, teams will have access to medical and physio rooms, hydrotherapy plunge pools, bathrooms, coach briefing rooms and large indoor warm-up areas - all of which have been completed.

Photos of the facilities were released on Tuesday as part of an update on the project, which said it was on the “home stretch”.

The stadium’s four changing suites are on the ground floor of the west stand, two each side of the players’ tunnel that leads onto the field of play.

The design would be great for double-header events like the Anzac weekend Super Rugby Pacific’s inaugural Super Round in April - the first major sporting event to be held in the newly opened facility, the update said.

The facilities are a far cry from what teams playing at Apollo Projects Stadium have available to them, which Caroline Harvie-Teare, chief executive of council-owned company Venues Ōtautahi, described as “pretty basic”.

“We’re talking portacoms, more like a spa pool than anything else - that venue doesn’t even have a kitchen,” she said of the Addington stadium.

“We don’t have a proper warm-up area, and we can’t house the likes of a double header, particularly if there’s a female team involved.”

The new stadium would be a “wonderful change,” she said.

In other developments, the exterior walls of the stadium are weeks away from completion; and the roof cladding installation is past the halfway mark and will finish up in September.

The roof of the fully covered stadium is partly made from an extremely strong type of clear plastic known as ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene), allowing natural light to shine through from the north to support turf growth while protecting visitors from the elements.

The roof will keep the temperature inside the stadium around two to four degrees warmer than outside.

Both of the LED big screens are in place and the electronics will go in next.

The $683 million new stadium will have a seating capacity of 30,000 for sports events and can hold 36,000 spectators for large music concerts.