Optus Stadium tours, Perth: Inside Australia's new sporting mecca

It's a bright, warm day in Perth and I'm standing outside the glistening facade of the city's newest landmark – the 60,000-capacity Optus Stadium.

From a distance, the oval structure looks like it's covered in dark wooden boards, which seems extraordinary for a building of this size. Now that I'm closer, I realise it's rust-coloured metal – a popular colour in the city's new projects, reflecting, as it does, the landscape and earth, a source of much of the state's history and wealth.

The $1.6 billion-stadium, built over four years, claims to be the most state-of-the-art, fan-friendly venue in the country. Opened in January, it can't yet lay claim to any of the great sporting history that the Melbourne Cricket Ground or even the much smaller, neighbouring Western Australian Cricket Association Ground (WACA), but it's already beginning to rack up significant events.

Its first, a one-day international between Australia and England, was a sellout. More recently, international pop sensation Ed Sheeran filled the stadium for two shows, with large numbers of fans reportedly flying in from Asia and beyond to catch the star in concert.

While cricket and concerts will form a major part of the stadium's use, its real heart will be AFL. I'm part of a public tour of the stadium that takes us deep into the underbelly of the sports venue, inside the yet-to-be-hallowed halls where the two resident AFL teams, the West Coast Eagles and the Fremantle Dockers, will warm up, cool down and plan their strategies on game days.

There are no events on today, so we're able to access areas that are rarely seen by the average punter. We make our way through the locker rooms of Fremantle, into their bathing room (where players can jump straight into an ice bath, or a jacuzzi, after the game) and the small auditorium where the coach will address the team and play back footage of their performances and their opponents on a large screen.

With more than 100 years of history behind Australia's stadiums, the developers took the opportunity to learn from some of the past problems of its predecessors. Seats are larger (at 50 centimetres wide, they're about the size of a premium economy seat on a plane) and there is more open space in concourse. There are also 1000 TV screens throughout the venue showing the event, meaning you don't need to miss a second of the action when you go to get a drink or use the bathroom (there's even one in the baby change room). That's in addition to the two giant scoreboard screens, the largest in the southern hemisphere, covering a whopping 340 square metres each.