What Canberra's COVID change mean for the Brumbies, Raiders and Black Opal carnival

The ACT Brumbies, Canberra Raiders and Canberra Racing are set to benefit from a major shift in virus protocols, which will give spectators more freedom and hopefully encourage larger crowds.

It's understood talks are already underway about reopening the ticket offices at Canberra Stadium after almost two years of supporters having to purchase online before arrival at the ground.

Ticket box offices were initially shut to limit interactions, touch points and large queues of people.

It is hoped, however, the early-buying habits will remain as a legacy of coronavirus after allowing the venue and teams to plan for specific crowd sizes and avoiding long queues at the gate.

But the timing of the ACT government's announcement could prevent changes being made in time for the Brumbies' season-opener against the Western Force on Sunday.

Canberra Stadium was already able to have 100 per cent capacity for games, but the decision to scrap indoor density limits will allow more corporate sales while patrons will not have to return to their seats to eat or drink.

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Thoroughbred Park is set to be one of the biggest beneficiaries after being forced to limit attendees to major race days.

Just 667 fans attended the Melbourne Cup in 2020 while crowd limits were in place for the Black Opal and Canberra Cup.

Racing ACT chief executive Andrew Clark had been waiting for an exemption to have the limit increased to 5000 for this year's two-day carnival, but he can now throw open the gates in the coming weeks.

Black Opal and Canberra Cup corporate tickets were sold out. The club is now preparing to release more after the density-limit changes and is hopeful the new freedoms will lead to the biggest turn out in three years.

"My reading of it is that we're allowed to have more [than 5000] people, if we wish. And we certainly do," Clark said.

"We'd been working on getting an exemption for 5000 and we were reasonably progressed with that. But my understanding is that the exemption is no longer needed, we just need a COVID safety plan.

"We'll be looking to maximise the crowd opportunity and hopeful the crowd will come out and celebrate with us. It's very much a positive."

The racing club was stuck in crowd limbo last year, with their hopes of an exemption caught up in a bureaucratic delay that hampered their ability to plan appropriately.

The Brumbies and Raiders have also struggled, with limits on spectator numbers throughout 2020 and then the NRL shifting all of Canberra's games to Brisbane last year.

But all three will benefit from the changes, with the Brumbies playing four of their first five games in the capital, the Raiders starting their season at home on March 11 and the Black Opal carnival on March 13-14.

It's believed venues will also no longer have to provide contact-tracing data to ACT Health. It was previously required and had to be sent to health officials four afters after the event.

They will need to provide details of COVID-safe cleaning protocols to get the final tick of approval from health officials.

"Our hospitality packages had sold out. They were sold out quicker than I can remember seeing them go. Now we can add to that," Clark said.

"Trying to enforce people sitting down while drinking [at the track] was quite difficult. We would have done it, but it may have kept certain people away. So this is great news for us."

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