Australian basketball fans were left fuming on Thursday night as thousands of fans packed Marvel Stadium to not only sit on plastic Bunnings chairs, but to also watch a depleted USA take on the Boomers in a World Cup warmup match.
A courtside ticket cost upwards of $1,500, only, the seating wasn’t exactly courtside. The floor itself was raised to eye level, leaving an obscured view that old Rusty himself wasn’t too pleased with.
It’s not the first time fans have been ripped off from either their money or enjoyment due to poor organising or just basic human error. Here’s a look at some of sports most disastrous events over the years:
TNA Victory Road 2011
After bouncing around between the independent circuit and the WWE, Jeff Hardy once again ventured over to Total Nonstop Action hoping to revive his career.
Hardy’s battle with prescription pills and alcohol had already reached rock bottom ahead of a match with Sting at Victory Road in 2011. But nobody, not even Eric Bischoff, was prepared for what came next.
An inebriated Hardy missed his entrance cue by 40 seconds, stumbling to the ring before referee Earl Hebner threw up the ‘X’ sign. Bischoff quickly headed to the ring to buy time, taunting the crowd with changed stipulations to the match.
In the end, the match lasted no longer than two minutes, as Sting shoot pinned Hardy on the back of a Scorpion Death Drop. TNA fans screamed “bulls**t*, Sting held onto the World Heavyweight title, and Hardy sadly went on to spend a brief period in the county jail on a drugs charge several months later.
Brisbane Rugby Tens
Suncorp Stadium is used to drawing large crowds when the Broncos and Wallabies are in town, but not so much when the Rugby Tens rolls around.
Last year drew only 11,340 supporters on a Friday night – a low number considering New Zealand’s top two Super Rugby sides were present. It doesn’t help that the final also featured only 17-points between the Blues and the Hurricanes.
The tournament is scheduled to remain at Suncorp for the next two years, but as we’ve seen recently with the popularity of the Lions, Brisbane fans are a fickle bunch.
Montreal Olympics
When Montreal was announced as the host city of the 1976 Olympic Games, Canadians everywhere rejoiced.
Never in its century-long history had the Olympics been hosted in Canada, but what Montreal failed to understand was the cost involved in hosting such a large-scale event.
Estimates of the cost of the games are around the $6.1 billion mark, with an overrun of about 720%.
2022 Qatar World Cup
This one’s a bit of a wait and see, but if Brazil’s World Cup was anything to go by, Qatar could be in some financial trouble following the 2022 World Cup.
Aside from coin, Qatar also poses a few challenges in terms of accommodation, climatic conditions, basic human rights and pure fan enjoyment. The host nation has already come under fire for slavery and migrant worker allegations – making the 2022 World Cup one of the most controversial sports stories in the making.
India’s 2010 Commonwealth Games
India hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games, although you mightn’t know it given how few people attended the events.
Poor living conditions at the Commonwealth Games Village was just one concern on a list of many. Heavy monsoon rains threatened the whole way through, while the added threat of a terror attack played a part in the low crowd numbers.
The Not-So Goodwill Games
The Goodwill Games offered some fun moments during its 15-year history, like Michelle Kwan’s famous gold medal win. But it’s mostly remembered (or forgotten) as a B-grade alternative to the Olympics.
Owned and created by Ted Turner, the games originally helped with the relationship between the United States and Russia, but once Turner merged with Time Warner, the ratings started to suffer.
Brisbane hosted the final Goodwill Games in 2001, which left us with this memorable ad.
2018 Commonwealth Games
The Gold Coast’s 2018 Commonwealth Games will forever be known as a laughingstock.
Things got off to an expensive start as the state government plunked a $2.1 million set of streetlights in the centre of the pacific motorway spelling out ‘Gold Coast’. It was a clever idea in theory, except the government forgot two important things: 1. Yatala isn’t the Gold Coast and 2. Motorists can’t read them when passing by.
The games itself were plenty entertaining, but nothing beats a handful of African athletes disappearing before and after. Throw in a comical closing ceremony and perhaps the most on-brand thing in Gold Coast history – syringes found at the athlete’s village – it’s not hard to understand why no one takes this place seriously.
XFL
American football also dabbled in a more extreme version of the NFL, as WWE CEO Vince McMahon attempted to blend the storylines (and violence) of professional wrestling into the world of pro football.
The plan worked for a while, right before fans saw through the thin level of talent on the field. The XFL was the ideal landing place for football players that couldn’t quite cut in the NFL, but with very few personalities, the league folded after its inaugural season in 2001.
The WWF and NBC, who owned 50% of the company, reportedly lost $35 million each. The good news is the XFL will be back next year, new and improved with eight teams announced and, of course, McMahon back at the helm.
AFLX
From Zooper Dooper goals all the way down to Nat Fyfe dressed up as a poor man’s superhero, the AFL’s short-lived AFLX dream has to go down as one of Australia’s top sporting fails.
The game itself was designed to combine everything great about Aussie Rules into a much shorter, rectangular version of the game. With more points for super goals and basically no defensive strategies, AFLX was the AFL’s attempt at replicating the Big Bash’s success.
In the end, Gil McLachlan finally pulled the plug after two seasons, perhaps realizing that money might finally be better invested in a Tasmanian team (we hope).
Disco Demolition Night
Baseball stadiums are always coming up with weird and wacky promotions to keep their fans interested in coming to the ballpark. Just last week the Nationals hosted “Yoga Night”, but the White Sox take the cake for their Disco Demolition Night in 1979.
In the midst of a losing season, Chicago urged their fans to bring any disco records they wished to be detonated at the end of the opening game of the day/night doubleheader. Event organizers were expecting no more than 25,000 fans at Comiskey Park, but instead, a crowd of 50,000 turned up as the White Sox exploded a large crate of records on the field.
In the end, a riot ensued, forcing the cancellation of the second game. There’s much more to this story, which you can all see here:
The Basket-Brawl
It wouldn’t be a list without last year’s infamous basket-brawl between the Philippines and Australia.
While the players themselves were to blame for the fight, the security at Philippine Arena allowed several fans and security guards to get involved in the melee. One seccy even managed to throw a chair at Nathan Sobey, right before the crowd hurled water bottles at the players.
Packers v Raiders
The NFL is constantly trying to grow the game overseas, but they may have done more harm than good on Friday.
Winnipeg played host to the Packers and the Raiders during the third week of the preseason, and while the fans turned up, so too did the field.
Due to an unstable patch of turf in the end zone, the field was shortened to 80-yards, meaning neither side could kick-off. Green Bay wisely chose to rest 33 players, but that wasn’t enough to stop first-round draft pick Rashan Gary from being carted off with a head injury in the second quarter.
The Play
One of the most memorable plays in college football history is also one of the most forgettable.
Nicknamed ‘The Play, 1982’s crucial rivalry game between Stanford and California came down to a last-second kickoff return that is most remembered for Stanford’s band members stepping foot on the field.
Down 20-19, California fielded the kickoff, made five lateral passes, and scored a walk-off 25-20 touchdown victory. Before the ball crossed the end zone though, members of the Cardinal band stepped in front of the kick returner thinking the game was over. It was a wild ending, but also one of the most controversial and disastrous conclusions in the game’s history.