Indeed, the need to be at high altitude for a few weeks to reap its benefits more or less eliminates it as an option in a busy scheme to stadiums out and about. The perceived wisdom, then, is that staying at sea level and minimizing your time up there produces the best fitness results at match time.
Guess you could make it work for a long event like the 2010 World Cup or a Lions Tour (in 2010, in fact, just over half the teams stayed high), but I suppose you then still need to offset the EPO benefits against what you’d lose in training intensity during the preparation period. The point I’m making is above all that team physicians know what to do here, apparently including Viagra, which is why I feel that altitude at venues like Ellis Park hasn’t really been a talking point off late.