Marvel Stadium

Marvel Stadium is Docklands, Melbourne’s 53,343-seat arena, with selected concert configurations reaching beyond 70,000 people. Its defining feature is a retractable roof that opens or closes in about eight minutes, turning a vast football ground into a weather-contained concert bowl. For stadium-scale pop, rock, hip-hop and electronic tours, the appeal is immense capacity alongside a seating system that shifts with each production.

A Docklands stadium with a record-setting night

Construction began in October 1997, with Docklands selected for its space and existing road and public-transport access. The first event arrived on 9 March 2000: an AFL match between Essendon and Port Adelaide. Built as a purpose-made replacement for Waverley Park, the venue placed Australian rules football in Melbourne’s expanding western CBD edge and paired it with a roofed, multi-purpose event design.

Its concert history has supplied the sharper marker for music fans. On 19 March 2017, Adele played the venue during her Live 2017 Tour to 77,327 people, the stadium’s largest attendance for a single concert. Reports from the night recorded Adele halting the show to challenge a security guard who had instructed dancing fans to sit; the packed finale became a particularly vivid example of the room’s ability to hold a full-scale pop spectacle.

The room when the lights go down

Booking works at stadium scale: major international tours share the calendar with AFL, cricket, rugby, corporate events and ceremonies. Concert programming suits large-format pop, rock, electronic, hip-hop and R&B productions. The arena combines 17,600 square metres of natural turf with a 1,400-square-metre synthetic perimeter, while its seating layout can be reconfigured for different events. Expect a wide bowl, expansive floor options and production designed for the full building; elevated seats give the clearest view of a show’s total visual design.