Best stadium and sports tours in Australia

Sport is close to a national religion in Australia, and you don’t need to attend an actual match to feel that. A behind-the-scenes stadium tour will take you through change rooms, player tunnels, and press boxes that are normally off-limits, and give you a much better sense of why these venues matter so much to the people who fill them every week.

Even if you don’t follow Australian sport at all, these tours are genuinely interesting from a pure architecture and history angle. Several of these stadiums have hosted Olympic Games, World Cups, and more than a century of sporting history.

Here’s where to go and what each tour actually includes.

📋 TL;DR — the quick version

• 🏟️ The MCG, Melbourne is Australia’s biggest and most famous stadium, with a museum covering the entire history of Australian sport.
• 🏉 Sydney’s Accor Stadium hosted the 2000 Olympic Games opening and closing ceremonies.
• 🎾 Melbourne Park lets you walk onto the Australian Open’s show courts outside tournament time.
• 🏏 The Adelaide Oval combines cricket history with rooftop climbing views over the city.
• 🏊 Sydney’s Olympic Park precinct includes the aquatic centre where Olympic swimming records were broken.
• 🎫 Match-day tours differ from off-season tours — check which one you’re booking.
• 👟 Some tours include a rooftop climb, which requires a reasonable level of fitness and no fear of heights.

🏟️ The MCG, Melbourne

The Melbourne Cricket Ground, known to almost everyone simply as “the G,” is the spiritual home of Australian sport. It holds over 100,000 people, making it one of the largest stadiums in the world, and it’s hosted everything from the 1956 Olympic Games to Ashes cricket Tests and AFL Grand Finals.

The stadium tour takes you through areas fans never normally see: the players’ race, the change rooms, and the media centre high above the ground. Attached to the stadium is the National Sports Museum, which covers everything from cricket and AFL to the Olympics and Paralympics, with genuine historic memorabilia on display.

🎯 What to expect on the tour

1. The players’ race. The tunnel players walk through onto the ground, with the roar of the crowd amplified by the stadium’s shape.
2. Change rooms. Depending on availability, you may see the home or away rooms used by AFL and cricket teams.
3. The National Sports Museum. Usually included in the combined ticket, and worth at least an hour on its own.

👉 Book an MCG tour on GetYourGuide →

🏉 Accor Stadium, Sydney Olympic Park

Built for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, this stadium hosted the opening and closing ceremonies watched by billions of people around the world. It’s since been used for rugby league grand finals, major concerts, and international rugby matches.

The surrounding Sydney Olympic Park precinct is worth exploring beyond just the main stadium. It includes the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre, where multiple Olympic swimming records fell in 2000, and is now open to the public for a swim if you’d like to do a few laps where champions once raced.

🎾 Melbourne Park and the Australian Open courts

Melbourne Park hosts the Australian Open every January, one of tennis’s four Grand Slam tournaments. Outside of tournament time, you can often walk right onto the show courts, including Rod Laver Arena, and see the players’ lounges and media facilities normally reserved for professional athletes.

If you’re a tennis fan, this is genuinely one of the best sports tours in the country, since so much of the venue is normally completely inaccessible during the tournament itself, when it’s packed with players, officials, and broadcast crews.

🏏 Adelaide Oval

Adelaide Oval is one of the most picturesque cricket grounds in the world, with St Peter’s Cathedral visible over the stands and a hill of grassy seating that’s remained largely unchanged for over a century. The heritage scoreboard, still hand-operated for some matches, is a rare surviving piece of cricket history.

For a different kind of thrill, the RoofClimb Adelaide Oval experience lets you climb the outside of the stadium roof itself, with views stretching from the city skyline to the Adelaide Hills. It’s a proper adventure activity, not just a walking tour.

• Bring a head for heights. The rooftop climb involves ladders and a harness, similar to bridge climb experiences in other cities.
• Book the heritage tour separately if you’re more interested in cricket history than the climb itself.
• Check match schedules. Some tour elements are unavailable on major match days.

🏊 Sydney Olympic Park’s wider sporting precinct

Beyond the main stadium and aquatic centre, Sydney Olympic Park includes tennis centres, an athletics stadium, and cycling facilities that are still used for both elite training and public sport today. Cycling and walking paths wind through the whole precinct, making it an easy half-day out even without booking a formal tour.

👉 Book a Sydney Olympic Park tour on GetYourGuide →

🎒 Tips for stadium tours

• 📅 Check for match-day restrictions. Tours are often shortened or cancelled entirely on days when a major event is being held.
• 👟 Wear flat, closed shoes. Many tours involve stairs, uneven turf, and sometimes rooftop walkways.
• 📸 Ask about photo restrictions. Some change rooms and player areas don’t allow photography out of respect for the athletes who use them.
• 🎟️ Combine with a match ticket if you can. Seeing a venue empty and then full of 80,000 fans are two completely different experiences.
• 🕐 Book the first tour of the day. Stadiums get busier as the day goes on, especially during school holidays.

⚠️ Mistakes to avoid

1. Booking without checking the stadium calendar. Some tours are unavailable during major tournaments or concerts.
2. Assuming all areas are always included. Change rooms and player areas sometimes rotate depending on which teams are currently using them.
3. Skipping the museum add-ons. At venues like the MCG, the attached museum is often the most detailed and interesting part of the whole visit.
4. Underestimating the rooftop climb difficulty. Adelaide Oval’s RoofClimb is more physically demanding than it looks in photos.

You don’t need to know the rules of cricket or AFL to appreciate these venues. Walk through a players’ tunnel with 100,000 empty seats around you, and you’ll understand something real about why Australians care about sport as much as they do.