Hi Tony,

You normally have a boat giveaway as part of the prizes but no boat this year.  Will there be one next year? N.B. really enjoyed ourselves anyway but found that unusual. Ian.

Hi Ian,

We can only give away the prizes that sponsors provide us & those we have the budget to buy. On the income side, many sponsors have cut back on their involvement and all have cut back any cash contributions. On the expense side, there are ever increasing amounts paid to Port Stephens Council for the park hire and insurance costs to name a couple of the major fixed costs. All in all, it’s quite a budget squeeze. For the Tournament to survive, it needs to be financially viable, and this year it wasn’t. The poor weather and subsequent big drop in competitor numbers plus sponsor cut backs really hurt.

In the case of the boat, motor, trailer packages, for the past number of years BRP (Evinrude) has assisted us and we’ve had to buy the boats & trailers from Savage. This year, BRP changed its distribution network and Telwater (owners of Savage) are now the Evinrude motor & parts distributors in Australia. Unfortunately, we could not come to an agreement with them in time for this years event.

On the positive side, we welcomed a number of new sponsors this year including c4 Industries / Rock Oil, Hope Wine Group, Life Cell Marine and Thou Walla Sunset Retreat so the news is not all bad.

We’re already addressing these factors to build competitor numbers and sponsors for 2018 as we’d all like the Tournament’s 25th Birthday to be a huge success and a pointer to the event thriving towards its 50th birthday party.    

Cheers, Tony.

 

0

Your Cart