Dunedin Venues Management Limited (DVML) is the council-owned company that runs Forsyth Barr Stadium, the Dunedin Centre and the Town Hall in Ōtepoti Dunedin. It is worth a profile because it is the clearest case in the country of a question every events-led destination eventually faces: who pays for the building, and is the event money worth it?
A stadium company that does not own its stadium
Forsyth Barr Stadium opened in 2011, in time for that year’s Rugby World Cup, and the city split it in two from the start. Dunedin Stadium Property Limited (DSPL) owns the building and carries the debt. DVML leases it and runs everything that happens inside. Both sit under Dunedin City Holdings, which is wholly owned by the Dunedin City Council.
The lease was set at 20 years from 1 August 2011 at $2 million a year, according to DVML’s 2019 annual report, so it runs to 2031 with rights of renewal to 2071. DVML also manages the Dunedin Centre and Town Hall under a separate council lease which, its accounts note, is still unsigned because of a dispute over who owns some of the assets.
The split matters for everything below. It lets the operator be judged as a business while the building is judged as infrastructure. It also means that reading DVML’s accounts on their own tells you less than half the story.
How it is built now
DVML’s audited accounts for the year to 30 June 2026, signed on 9 September, show total revenue of $12.34 million, up 5.3 percent on the year before but well below the $17.44 million of 2023/24. The 2024/25 drop of 32.8 percent came in a year with no major stadium concert.
Where the $12.34 million came from:
- Contracts with customers (venue hire, event management, memberships, sponsorship): $10.29 million
- Government grants: $1.50 million
- Leases of car parks, offices and telecommunications space in the precinct: $0.43 million
- Interest: $0.12 million
Two counterparties stand out. The council paid DVML $3.53 million for property and event management and its Event Attraction Fund contribution, 28.6 percent of revenue. DSPL, the stadium owner, paid DVML $1.80 million in management fees and reimbursements, while DVML paid DSPL $1.0 million in rent. So $5.34 million, or 43 percent of revenue, came from inside the council family, and on the stadium lease the money flowed net towards the tenant, by $0.80 million.
Spending was $12.33 million, including $2.84 million of salaries and wages and $7.96 million of other operating costs. That left a pre-tax profit of $8,000 and $3,000 after tax. EBITDA was $1.30 million against a Statement of Intent target of $1.87 million, the second year running it missed. Attendance across the venues was 244,800, up 18 percent on the year but 63 percent of the 390,400 recorded in 2018/19. The stadium hosted 72 commercial and community events against a target of 50.
The number
$9.4m
DSPL's deficit for 2024/25, before tax relief from the rest of the council group: $3.74 million of interest, $5.38 million of depreciation and $1.24 million of running costs, against $1.0 million of rent. 2024/25 is the latest year the property company has filed. (Dunedin Stadium Property Ltd annual report 2025)
What is worth copying: counting event money the way a funder can check it
The best thing DVML does is publish its event returns, and it publishes them when they miss. Each major event the council’s Event Attraction Fund supports has to clear a $5 million minimum of visitor marginal direct spend, meaning new money that would not otherwise have come to the city, as estimated by an independent economist, and a 15 to 1 return on the fund’s investment.
In 2025/26 the All Blacks test against France came in at $13.2 million, with 68 percent of the crowd from outside Dunedin, and Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live at $5.94 million. The stated returns were 26 to 1 and 21 to 1. Working backwards from DVML’s own ratios, the fund put roughly $0.5 million into the test and $0.3 million into the trucks. The same table reports a 66 percent satisfaction rating for the monster trucks, against an 80 percent target, and gives the reason as noise.
Plenty of event funding is justified with gross “economic impact” figures that count every local who would have spent the money anyway. Counting only displaced visitor spend, setting a floor per event and printing the misses beside the wins is the standard any council or regional tourism organisation should ask for before it funds an event.
The second thing worth noting is how much of next year’s revenue is already in the bank. Income received in advance, the unexpired part of multi-year memberships, corporate box licences and sponsorship plus money taken for future events, rose from $2.77 million to $5.27 million during the year, and 61 new membership seats were sold against a target of 50. That is why operating cash flow was $3.43 million on a profit of $3,000. It is good business, but about $2.5 million of that cash relates to events in future years, so it is a pre-sale, not a surplus.
Where the model runs out of road
The building does not pay for itself, and the rent has already been halved to keep the tenant upright. From 1 July 2024 DSPL cut DVML’s rent from $2 million to $1 million and stopped charging it rates and insurance, according to the council’s March 2026 report. The stadium company’s debt to the council’s treasury arm was $85.4 million at 30 June 2025. Interest and depreciation alone came to $9.12 million that year, more than nine times the rent.
Ratepayers are now paying more to stop the debt growing. Council officers modelled the stadium’s remaining life to 2060 and warned that leaving funding unchanged would take DSPL’s debt from about $85 million to $194 million by then. In March councillors chose to add $1.25 million a year in 2026/27 and a further $1.25 million from 2027/28, lifting the council’s annual capital injection into DSPL from $2.91 million to $4.15 million and then $5.4 million. Officers put the cost at a 0.75 percent rise in non-water rates in 2026/27. On that path the debt is forecast to be $37 million in 2060, under the land’s estimated $51 million value, and the model includes no roof replacement.
Add the other council payments to DVML and the city’s annual support for its two venue companies is already about $6.5 million, before the increase:
- Event Attraction Fund: $2.05 million
- Community access funding: $0.75 million
- Dunedin Centre operating funding: $0.76 million
- Share capital into DSPL: $2.91 million
That comes to $6.47 million, rising to about $7.7 million in 2026/27 and $9.0 million from 2027/28.
Concerts have dried up, and the competition has just got much harder. The last major international concert at the stadium was Pink in March 2024, according to Newstalk ZB in April 2026. Christchurch’s covered Te Kaha stadium opened that month, at 30,000 seats for sport and 37,500 for concerts, with a music programme starting in May. The roof that set Dunedin apart is no longer the only one in the South Island, and the newer one is in a bigger city with a bigger airport.
Leadership has turned over and some service targets slipped. Chief executive Paul Doorn resigned in April after 18 months. The 2026 report was signed by an interim chief executive, and Phil King, formerly managing director of Ticketek Australia, started in mid-September, according to the ODT. Member renewals by contract value were 66 percent against a 75 percent target, down from 72 percent the year before.
What to take away
If you run an event, a venue or a destination body that leans on public money, the lesson from DVML is that the operator can be run tightly and still not answer the real question, because the real cost sits on a different balance sheet. DVML breaks even, measures its events honestly and has pre-sold a good share of the years ahead. The building beside it loses about $9 million a year, and the ratepayer covers the gap.
What is transferable is the measurement: count only new visitor money, set a floor for every funded event, and publish the misses. What a reader should be wary of is any venue, attraction or event business whose accounts look healthy because someone else owns the asset, or has cut the rent to make them so. Ask for both sets of accounts before you judge either.
Written from public sources: Dunedin Venues Management Limited’s audited annual reports for the years ended 30 June 2026 and 30 June 2025, and its 2019 annual report for the lease terms and baseline attendance; Dunedin Stadium Property Limited’s audited annual report for the year ended 30 June 2025; the Dunedin City Council report “Dunedin Stadium Property Ltd: Debt Repayment Options” to the council meeting of 4 March 2026; Newstalk ZB’s report of 14 April 2026 on the chief executive’s resignation; and the Otago Daily Times report of 3 July 2026 on his successor and the March funding vote. All arithmetic is ours and reconciles to the audited statements. Written without the operator’s involvement. The Shoulder Season has no commercial relationship with any business it covers, takes no payment for coverage, and gives no subject approval over what is published.
Operator profiles run every week or two, a different business each time. Written from public sources, with no involvement from the operator and no commercial relationship of any kind.