The Victorian government has overturned a ban on World Cup matches being shown on big screens at Melbourne’s Federation Square.<\/p>\n
The ban had been put in place by Melbourne Arts Precinct, which manages the venue, after poor behaviour by some supporters at previous events.<\/p>\n
However, state premier Jacinta Allan has now permitted gatherings at the square after Football Australia urged her government to overturn the ban.<\/p>\n
“I disagree with that decision \u2013 and I am overturning it,” Allan said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“There’s always a risk of bad behaviour from a few at every public gathering, but police and security will be on site, and there’ll be zero tolerance for it. Now more than ever, people deserve more free stuff to do together in the city.”<\/p>\n
Australia supporters have gathered at Federation Square to watch tournament matches since 2006.<\/p>\n
The Melbourne Arts Precinct had said behaviour in previous years had been “unacceptable and damaging”.<\/p>\n
Video of fans celebrating went viral during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar as Australia advanced to the last 16, but there were incidents involving people being injured by flares and projectiles.<\/p>\n
Supporters also stormed barricades during the 2023 Women’s World Cup semi-final between Australia and England, leading to the screening of the Matildas’ third-place play-off being cancelled at the square.<\/p>\n
“After careful consideration, we’ve made the decision not to show the World Cup on Fed Square’s Big Screen this year,” Melbourne Arts Precinct director and chief executive Katrina Sedgwick had said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“This is due to the behaviour of a small number of people at previous screenings which was simply unacceptable and damaging to Fed Square.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Victorian government has overturned a ban on World Cup matches being shown on big screens at Melbourne’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[260],"class_list":{"0":"post-6798","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-melbourne","8":"tag-melbourne"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}