Making Waves At The Garden Of Eden

As one of the most iconic stadiums in the world, Eden Park is used to making waves.

Waves are pretty custom at the venue - almost every week, a Mexican wave will go up around the stadium as sports fans cheer on their favourite team and get into the spirit of the event. At concerts, the music swells in waves over the audience as they sway to some of their favourite tunes.

Now, Eden Park is set to embrace a whole new kind of wave as the stadium makes an ambitious bid to host the Wave Garden of Eden event as part of the World Surf League Challenger Series.

Water will be pumped into the stadium for the World Surf League tournament – a fresh new competition that will see some of the world’s top surfing talent vie for event wins and overall series titles.

If the Park is successful in its bid, the event will take place in October 2023, prior to the more traditional Piha Pro. Event organisers hope to attract big name talent to the competition, the likes of championship surfers Kelly Slater, Kanoa Igarashi, Brisa Hennessy and Carissa Moore.

“It’s not every day you can drop in and surf at a stadium,” says Eden Park Chief Executive Officer, Nick Sautner, “But our venue is always keen to dive headfirst into the radical and unconventional.”

“Due to this event’s unique nature, we anticipate it will generate a significant surge in tourism for Auckland – something needed more than ever following a tough few years. Eden Park will play an important part in bringing the region and country Back Together during this next post- COVID chapter.”

When the Colosseum was finished, the Romans asked themselves: what better way to celebrate the building’s capability than to flood the Colosseum and hold a massive naval battle?

So it was that Emperor Titus ordered the new Colosseum to be flooded, then used special flat-bottomed ships during the battle to replicate the battle between Athens and Syracuse. There was even an artificial island made in the middle of the arena where the sailors landed to fight. This is a model Eden Park has looked to as they developed the bid for this new tournament.

For the event to take place, it will require the stadium to be flooded with 1 million litres of water. However, this may not be as extreme as it sounds, thanks to Eden Park’s custom-built water treatment plant and bore.

The bore saved more than 11 million litres of water over its first summer and was the catalyst behind the idea for the Park to take a punt hosting a World Surf League Series.

“As we ramp up for events once again, we’re still looking for ways to increase our venue utilisation and carve space for new events in our lineup,” says Sautner.

“After our cutback in water waste, we reached out to industry experts across surf parks in Europe and Australia to see what was possible. We’re absolutely stoked to have found a way to extract the water from the Park’s aquifer and, with a compostable membrane, pump the stadium with water to create a massive hybrid wave park.”

“Working with local engineers, the waterproof membrane that will line our surf park has been designed from a similar composition to the compostable packaging in our retail outlets. This will ensure zero waste or environmental impact arising from the event.”

The ongoing saving of water is another consideration the team at the Park has already worked through, led by Facilities Change Manager Lance Johns.

“Because of the geology of Eden Park, there are four soak holes in the corners of the field that will act as a plug – put simply, they will return the water back to the aquifer post-event,” says Johns. “This ensures we can continue in our efforts to reuse, recycle and repurpose, in line with our sustainability plan.”

While Eden Park is considered by many to be a traditional cricket and rugby ground, over recent years it has begun to embrace a raft of new content.

From cultural to community to concert events, there has been plenty of exciting content in the Eden Park pipeline – but perhaps none quite as exciting as this.

If the Park can pull this one off, no doubt it will get a Perfect 10.

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