This article explores the role that elite sport has played in the State Government of Victoria`s (Australia) neoliberal agenda of creating an environment conducive to commercial activity. Adopting an urban entrepreneurial approach of selling the `city` as an attractive place for cross-border investment, the state government has strategically invested public funds into major sporting events in Melbourne. Four specific sporting events were examined: i) construction and redevelopments of `Melbourne Park` to host the Australian Open Tennis Championships; ii) hosting the 2006 Commonwealth Games; iii) acquisition of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix and continued political, corporate and media support for the event; and iv) construction of an urban football stadium. Newspaper reports and parliament transcripts between 1984 and 2014 were collected to highlight issues of contest in the `sport city` in conjunction with a thematic analysis of interviews with influential cultural producers of the `sport city` - most notably state premiers, members of parliament, CEOs of public sports trusts and newspaper journalists. Findings illustrate that the Victorian state has successively re-regulated a neoliberal urban entrepreneurial strategy, often preventing dissident groups from resisting neoliberal activities, and that in Melbourne sport operates as `cultural glue` to establish the logic of neoliberalism in an embodied sense.
© Copyright 2020 Urban Studies. SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.