Adelaide Oval

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Adelaide Oval is a sports stadium in the Adelaide Park Lands, in the suburb of North Adelaide, South Australia. It is best known for cricket and Australian rules football, and it holds about 53,500 spectators. Its curved stands look a little like waves, and next to a giant digital screen stands an old hand-operated scoreboard that fans love.

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At a glance

Country: Australia
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Built: 1873

Quick answers

Where is Adelaide Oval?

Adelaide Oval is in Adelaide, Australia.

When was Adelaide Oval built?

Adelaide Oval was built in 1873.

A historic cricket and Australian football ground with wave-like stands and a heritage scoreboard.

The ground grew out of the South Australian Cricket Association, which was formed in 1871. The association leased a patch of the Park Lands beside the River Torrens, and the oval opened for cricket in December 1873. Today it is the home of the Adelaide and Port Adelaide football teams, the Adelaide Strikers and the South Australian state cricket team. Few stadiums in the world host both Test cricket and top-level football.

How the Oval began

Building the first ground took hard work. The area was levelled by hand labour and planted with couch grass, and the whole enclosed space covered about 12 acres. The first match was played on Saturday 13 December 1873 between two teams of local players, watched by about 500 people. The day before, 2,000 sheep were sent onto the field to trim the grass.

A grandstand opened in 1882, and in 1884 the Oval staged its first Test match. A grassy mound was built for that match and Moreton Bay fig trees were planted around it.

Rebuilding for cricket and football

Over the years new stands were added, floodlights arrived in 1997 for night games, and a new Western Stand opened in 2010. The big change came between 2012 and 2014, when the South Australian government put $450 million towards a rebuild that made the Oval work for football as well as cricket. The Eastern and Riverbank Stands were added, and a footbridge over the River Torrens now links the ground to the city and the railway station.

The famous scoreboard

The heritage-listed scoreboard began service in 1911 and was designed by the architect F. Kenneth Milne. It still stands beside a modern digital scoreboard, and people still change its numbers by hand. The highest crowd ever recorded at the Oval was 62,543 people at a football grand final in 1965. In 2024 the Oval Hotel opened, which is described as Australia's first stadium hotel.

Fun facts

Its hand-operated scoreboard, still in use, dates from 1911.
On the day before the first match in 1873, 2,000 sheep were used to thin the grass.
The heritage scoreboard has been working since 1911 and is still run by people, not computers.
The first Test match at the Oval was played in 1884.
The highest crowd on record is 62,543 people, at a football grand final in 1965.