{"id":4685,"date":"2019-12-20T06:21:34","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T06:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=4685"},"modified":"2019-12-20T06:21:34","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T06:21:34","slug":"newcastle-500-delivers-return-for-citys-investment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2019\/12\/20\/newcastle-500-delivers-return-for-citys-investment\/","title":{"rendered":"Newcastle 500 delivers return for city\u2019s investment"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"inner-head\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"inner-desc\">Following a third successful Newcastle 500,\u00a0City of Newcastle has outlined its costs and the event\u2019s benefits for the region.<br \/>\nCity of Newcastle has a $1.6 million annual events budget for the Newcastle 500.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Supercars-(1).jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newcastle.nsw.gov.au\/getattachment\/Council\/News\/Latest-News\/Newcastle-500-delivers-return-for-city%E2%80%99s-investmen\/Supercars-(1).jpg.aspx\" alt=\"Supercars-(1).jpg\" \/>The figure includes the license fee and all operational costs including traffic and waste management, communications, all event works specific to the event, and staff resources. It also includes a program of events, activations, and promotions to encourage patronage to businesses outside the race precinct.\u00a0There are no ongoing costs for City of Newcastle for storage of event delivery infrastructure for the Newcastle 500\u00a0after a\u00a0lease\u00a0with UGL\u00a0ended earlier this year.<br \/>\nThe\u00a0Hunter Research Foundation Centre (HRFC)\u00a0concluded\u00a0that\u00a0the benefit\u00a0of the 2017\u00a0three-day\u00a0event\u00a0to the local economy\u00a0was\u00a0$30.1 million,\u00a0confirming the decision of the elected Council in 2016 to secure the event on behalf of the region.<br \/>\nThe\u00a0$30.1 million\u00a0benefit\u00a0of the event\u00a0would be far higher\u00a0if\u00a0the direct\u00a0economic benefit in neighbouring areas including Port Stephens, Lake Macquarie, Maitland and Cessnock\u00a0were included.<br \/>\nThe $1.6 million figure represents just 5.3 per cent of the $30.1\u00a0million economic injection into the city as calculated by the\u00a0HRFC\u2019s\u00a0independent research.<br \/>\nThe Hunter Research Foundation Centre\u2019s independent analysis\u00a0also estimated that up to 124 full-time equivalent jobs have been generated from direct and flow-on impacts of the 2017 Newcastle 500.<br \/>\nCosts associated with\u00a0the City\u2019s\u00a0multi-million-dollar\u00a0East End civil works program were excluded from the economists\u2019 analysis\u00a0as\u00a0these\u00a0were\u00a0scheduled works brought forward\u00a0by\u00a0several years to enable the\u00a0inaugural\u00a0Newcastle 500.\u00a0There have been no requests from Supercars Australia for infrastructure works since the initial civil project.<br \/>\nCity of Newcastle is\u00a0still reviewing the actual cost of vandalism and malicious damage\u00a0in protest to the event, but the cost is substantial and\u00a0in\u00a0the tens of thousands of dollars.\u00a0This includes\u00a0poisoning of\u00a0turf,\u00a0graffiti on fencing and other infrastructure,\u00a0and the use of\u00a0potentially damaging materials such as oil and\u00a0diesel\u00a0dumped around the\u00a0suburb and parks.<br \/>\nCity of Newcastle is continuing to complete\u00a0general maintenance and upgrade works in the domain in line with its ongoing infrastructure\u00a0management program.<br \/>\nAccording to Destination NSW\u2019s analysis of the\u00a02017\u00a0event, visitors spent $12.5 million during their visit, with about 85 per cent spent in Newcastle and the wider Hunter region.<br \/>\nThe results confirm the event is on track to reach the projected visitation and economic impact targets of 81,000 overnight visitors and $57 million in visitor spend over five years.<br \/>\nNewcastle 500 has continued to provide widespread exposure for the city. This year\u2019s event weekend recorded 344 media stories from Friday 22 to Sunday 24 November, reaching a combined domestic audience of more than 14 million people, with an estimated value of over $2 million. According to Supercars Australia the TV audience for Newcastle 500 peaked at more than 1.8 million viewers with an average of 1.3 million people tuning in to the three-day event.<br \/>\n\u201cThree years in, the annual investment\u00a0for the City to host the\u00a0Newcastle 500 demonstrates the benefits to Newcastle\u00a0and the region,\u201d Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes said.<br \/>\n\u201cThe Newcastle 500 is the\u00a0biggest event on the local calendar with significant benefit to the region.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following a third successful Newcastle 500,\u00a0City of Newcastle has outlined its costs and the event\u2019s benefits for the region. City of Newcastle has a $1.6 million annual events budget for the Newcastle 500. The figure includes the license fee and all operational costs including traffic and waste management, communications, all event works specific to the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2019\/12\/20\/newcastle-500-delivers-return-for-citys-investment\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Newcastle 500 delivers return for city\u2019s investment&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newcastle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}