Spent the back end of April talking to four production managers across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Same complaint from all of them: load-ins that used to take 8 hours are now stretching to 11 or 12. Not occasionally. Routinely.

This isn’t a story about one bad show. It’s a pattern, and the people running the docks know it.

What the numbers actually look like

I’ve been keeping rough notes on load-in windows for the bigger arena tours coming through this year. The Coldplay run at Marvel Stadium last month booked a 14-hour build window for what would have been a 10-hour job in 2018. Same rig spec, same truck count (give or take). Just longer.

A production manager I won’t name (he’s still working) told me his last three arena builds in Sydney all overran by 90 minutes minimum. None of those overruns were because of crew incompetence. He’s working with the same heads of department he’s used since 2015.

So what’s changed?

The compliance layer is heavier

The big one, and nobody really wants to say it out loud, is that the safety paperwork has roughly doubled since the Falls Festival incident in 2019 and the various rigging reviews that followed. Pre-rig inspections that used to be a verbal sign-off now need photographic documentation. Every motor gets logged. Every shackle gets a serial number recorded.

I’m not arguing against any of this. I’ve been in this game long enough to remember when safety wasn’t taken seriously and people died because of it. But the time cost is real, and nobody’s adjusting the build windows to match. Promoters still book the same hours they booked five years ago, and then act surprised when the head rigger asks for an extra crew at double-time.

Crew availability is genuinely worse

Every venue manager I’ve spoken to in the last six months has said the same thing about local crew. The skilled people who used to take a day rate at the Hordern or Festival Hall have either moved into TV production, gone full-time with one of the big touring rental houses, or left the industry entirely during the lockdown years.

What’s left is a thinner pool, and that pool is older. The average age of a senior rigger in this country is creeping past 50. Apprenticeship pathways for live event riggers are still essentially non-existent outside of one or two TAFE programs. SafeWork NSW has been running consultation on this since 2024 but no actual scheme has launched.

Result: more jobs being done by fewer experienced people, with younger crew doing tasks they’re not quite ready for, which means more checking, more re-doing, and slower builds.

Touring rigs got bigger

The other thing that’s quietly happened is that the rigs themselves are heavier than they used to be. LED walls now cover entire upstage faces on tours that would have used a single video screen in 2018. Automation packages have grown. Pyro spec on country tours has crept up to the point where a Luke Combs build looks more like a Pink build did a decade ago.

More gear, more trucks, more time to unload, more time to rig, more time to focus and program. The shows are spectacular. Audiences love them. But the production budgets and the build windows haven’t grown at the same rate, and someone has to absorb the difference. Usually it’s the crew.

What venues could actually do

A few practical things would help, and I keep saying them to anyone who’ll listen.

First, build a 12-hour standard window into arena hire agreements instead of 10. Stop pretending. The math has changed.

Second, start tracking load-in data properly. Some venues have started using barcode systems and digital pre-rig sign-offs. The smarter operators are pairing this with simple analytics to spot bottlenecks before they cost overtime. I know a few production teams have been talking to outfits like Team400 about pulling their load-in and crew data into something useful instead of leaving it in spreadsheets nobody reads.

Third, fund actual rigger apprenticeships. The PLASA Australia working group has been beating this drum for three years. It needs government and venue operator co-funding, not another report.

What it means for the rest of the year

Expect more overruns through the winter touring season. Expect more curfew breaches in Melbourne (which means more fines). Expect at least one major tour to publicly grumble about Australian build conditions before September.

None of this is doom. Australian crews are still among the best in the world. But the gap between what’s being asked of them and what they’ve been given to work with has widened, and the people writing the contracts need to catch up.

I’ll be at the Hordern next week for a build. I’ll bring sandwiches.