Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre

Westpac Centre

The Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre is the indoor training and administration centre for the Collingwood Football Club of the AFL and the Victorian Institute of Sport located in Melbourne, Australia.^[1]

The Centre is currently known as Westpac Centre and was formerly known as the Lexus Centre, due to naming rights.

History

Known originally as the Olympic Pool, it was built as an indoor sporting arena for diving, swimming, water polo, and the swimming part of the modern pentathlon events for the 1956 Summer Olympics.^[2][3] It was the first fully indoor Olympic swimming venue in an Olympic Games and is the only major stadium structure from the 1956 Olympic Games with the facade intact.^[2] It is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.^[1] The design of this building was the winner of one of three international competitions held in 1952 to provide stadia for the 1956 Olympic Games.^[2] Architects Kevin Borland, Peter McIntyre, John and Phyllis Murphy and their engineer Bill Irwin won the only one of these competitions to be consummated.^[2] Construction began in October 1954 and the building was completed in 1956.^[2]

After redevelopment in the 1980s, the venue became the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre and later The Glass House.^[1] It hosted home games for the National Basketball League's North Melbourne Giants, as well as Melbourne Tigers, Eastside Spectres and Westside Saints.^[1] The arena, which had a capacity of 7,200 people,^[1] was also used as a concert venue.

Sponsorship and naming rights arrangements

The luxury vehicle manufacturer Lexus bought the naming rights to the venue in 2004; as the Lexus Centre, it no longer served as a public stadium, instead being used by the Victorian Institute of Sport and the Collingwood Football Club as a sports administration and training facility.^[1] The Lexus Centre was listed as part of the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct.

On 21 November 2009, Collingwood Football Club announced publicly on the official AFL website that Lexus would no longer continue to maintain the rights of naming the centre. Lexus announced in a statement that "the branding exercise had achieved its marketing objectives and was no longer a priority in its marketing strategy", hence ending a six year naming rights deal between Lexus and Collingwood.^[4]

In March, 2010, Collingwood announced that Westpac bank was the new naming rights sponsor of the centre.^[5]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "Melbourne & Olympic Parks - Venues > Lexus Centre". Melbourne & Olympic Parks. http://www.mopt.com.au/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-136//356_read-136/. Retrieved 2009-11-02. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e} Heritage Council of Victoria. "Heritage Register Online (Olympic Swimming Pool)". http://www.heritage.vic.gov.au/page_239.asp?ID=239&submit_action=ss. Retrieved 2007-09-27. 
3. ^ 1956 Summer Olympics official report. pp. 41-2.
4. ^ http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/87357/default.aspx
5. ^ http://thewestpaccentre.com.au/

External links

• Official website
• Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre at Austadiums

Coordinates: 37°49′27″S 144°58′47″E / 37.82417°S 144.97972°E / -37.82417; 144.97972