February 19, 2010
Special sporting events across the Tamworth Regional Council area gave a $16.5 million boost to the local economy in 2008 but a new report also shows that with a special development program and more active sports promotion that figure could triple in five years.
The findings of a comprehensive new sports audit have shown that sporting events bring huge economic benefit to the region – but that there’s plenty more potential if more players keep their eye on the ball.
The audit has been completed across some 45 sports involving about 140 sporting bodies and shows that in 2008 – the calendar audit year – there were 238 events hosted in the Council area, outside of normal competition games.
Tamworth Regional Council has released some preliminary results from the Sportex audit report expected to be finalised and handed over to Council next week.
The audit has been underway for nearly 12 months and includes a full accounting of the 2008 sporting year where events attracted participants outside the host centre to stay overnight, the economic impact of those events, and also an analysis of current sporting facilities and capabilities, both in physical and human terms.
The audit shows the 238 special events attracted 54,666 competitors and visitors worth some $12.5million to the economy but that another 25,200 sports fans came for day tripper sport and they contributed an extra $4.057million.
The results show that the sporting economy is lopsided with lots of low yield events but that big blockbusters are worth huge economic impact. Equine related sports represent nearly 20% of all special events and were worth about 42% of the total dollar injection.
The next four biggest sports with the biggest economic impact were gymnastics, athletics, hang gliding and hockey but a number of smaller sports with lesser profiles also attract good numbers for special events such as boxing and baseball. The most consistent sports for mean economic impact were gymnastics, baseball, gliding, athletics and waterpolo.
Three events in equine, gymnastics and athletics, brought an economic impact of greater than $500,000 each and another nine events brought impacts of between $250,000 and $500,000 over the sample period.
The remaining 226 events contributed anywhere from $618 up to $250,000 each.
The biggest generator was the NCHA’s Annual Futurity, a cutting horse event that was the first big test for the new equine centre, which was worth $1.839million in economic impact. The NSW Country Championships hosted by the local gymnastics club was worth $988,800 and the NSW Regional Athletics Championships brought in $560,000. Horse events made up five of the next nine biggest dollar events in the sports calendar with baseball, hockey and hang gliding providing another four.
Tamworth Regional Council general manager Glenn Inglis says the audit results will be reported to the council next month with recommendations about how the city can capitalise on the economic benefits of sport and consider future strategies or pathways to build on the sporting profile.
Mr Inglis said Council would consider various options and cost/benefit analyses that would determine future partnerships, promotions, sports development models and how the city can kick more goals to win more events and sports investment.
He said the reports suggested many events are ad hoc, independently run events by associations or clubs with little coordinated connection with other bodies. Initial results suggest Tamworth has plenty of sport going on but we can do a whole lot better if we put a bit more into the gameplan of getting more people here longer and more big events that attract more spectators.
Sportex says that if sport is managed in a coordinated and strategic manner and executed with an entrepreneurial focus then it offers major potential for economic growth. It says plenty of other big regional centres are doing big things with sporting events.
Mr Inglis says the council report will consider some development directions for sport and some options to shape the face of the future and the sports economy.
The Sportex project was completed with the help of local sports bodies, their state and federal affiliates, and a group of local sports champions and media figures.
It also included analysis of the calendar events and a destinational segment which examined accommodation and the spread of events. Mr Inglis says with the support of Tourism Tamworth, which also contributed funding to project, valuable information about accommodation capacity of the city, the highs and lows in sport events spread across the year, and the windows of opportunities or gaps during the year to support big sports events, has also been collected.
"Sport is an industry, a business and a big business at that and by identifying the areas where just a little more help and support can assist, we can assess those as viable economic development strategies and we can make planning decisions based on those. That support might be in infrastructure or asset upgrades or in human capabilities to secure and run bigger events.
“We now have some hard objective data, not just subjective or anecdotal information, to work on. How we do that best within the framework of the council’s management plans and partnerships with the sporting world are the next big steps we take. “
Key findings
• The biggest number of major events was in Equine sport which had 46 events during the year. Golf had 36, motorsport 25, rugby union 23 and rugby league 11.
• The biggest generator was the NCHA’s Annual Futurity, a cutting horse event that was the first big test for the new equine centre, which was worth $1.839million in economic impact. The NSW Country Championships hosted by the local gymnastics club was worth $988,800 and the NSW Regional Athletics Championships brought in $560,000.
• Horse events made up five of the next nine biggest dollar events in the sports calendar with baseball, hockey and hang gliding providing another four.
• The ABCRA’s national finals series was worth $373,766 in 2008, the Bendemeer rodeo kicked in $370,800, two reining shows at AELEC contributed $317,240 and $296,640 and the Upper Horton rodeo was worth $321,360.
• Baseball’s Invitational Carnival contributed $337,892, a Hockey NSW sports development camp was worth $284,280 and two Manilla hang or para gliding events, the Cross Country Open world series worth $278,100 and the NSW hang gliding championships, $267,635, also boosted the economy.
• The survey was completed over 2008 and included only the first five events held at the Australian Equine and Livestock Events Centre. Those five events generated economic impact of $2.57million or 48% of the total amount from equine events throughout Council that year. The average length of stay of those AELEC events was 5.6nights.
PLEASE NOTE: The total economic impact figure was derived from an audit of ALL sports. The subsequent audit of sports bodies, infrastructure and event capability included those bodies using council facilities and where council has links to their event management and not commercial or privately owned grounds.