World Powerboating Championships - Galway 2011

po0k

Powerboating tests to attract up to 200,000 visitors to city
December 20, 2009 - 9:50am

The local organisers of the World Powerboating Championships, which will be staged in Galway next Summer, have ratcheted up their preparations and planning for the event, which is expected to attract around 200,000 visitors to the city and Salthill.

Read more on Galway City Tribune

Chris_533976

John Killeen, who secured the Volvo Ocean Race in 2009 and was central to attracting this Powerboat Championships, told the Galway City Tribune that Tuesday’s meeting was very positive and added “it’s full steam ahead now”.

This man is a legend, seems to me hes the only person in Galway with any drive to do something different.

Good news of this too is that hopefully they'll do what they did for the Ocean Race and have a mini airshow in tandem.

JohnCleary

OK lad's let's clear a few things up here...

First of all, it's 2010

Secondly, the only thing that's been confirmed is that the Start/Finish of the Round Ireland Powerboat Race will be held in Galway. NO other events (ie. inshore Formula / P750 racing) have been confirmed yet. It was a little naive of the organisers (*NOT* LDIG) to say that there were going to be powerboating events happening in Salthill, as they haven't even surveyed the area (I did this myself last year when the event was only in talks and forwarded my opinions... a huge amount of work has to go into the beaches (ie. clearing the rocks) before any powerboat events can happen off the shore (incidently these are the powerboating class that I race, so not talking through my hole). However, with the right people behind it these races can be a huge success because of the spectator attraction. An example i'll give you is Youghal in 2008 - I was ever so slightly involved in the event which got 100,000 from Cork County Council, but the return to the local economy was 2.2 million and saw 65,000 visitors over a weekend (And this was JUST the P750 racing, nothing else). So, let's use some stat's here to show a point. Galway injected 10million into the Volvo stopover, and got 55million back. So that's a return ratio of 5.5:1. Now, look at the event in Cork.. Cork injected 100k and saw 2.2 million back. That's a return ration of 22:1. So, from a financial point of view, the little event in Cork was a MUCH bigger success than the Volvo stopover. And at the end of the day, it's these ratio's that everything boils down to

LDIG can organise one hell of a party, but have different experiences to powerboating events which have different needs. They will be responsible for the 'party' aspect of it, not the technical aspet. Also, remember that a lot of business' from last year's Volvo stopover have STILL not been paid which p1sses me off to no end. Granted that this is not LDIG's fault (The money was promised from Failte Ireland), but I feel it's bad taste to be 'full steam ahead' yet some people are still being left high and dry from last year. A *lot* more people are involved behind the scenes than LDIG, I just want that to be clear, it's just the LDIG are the only frontline from a media aspect

Also, this event was NOT firstly planned for Galway, so this thing about LDIG being involved from the start is total bullsh1t - they jumped on the oppertunity when they were offered to handle the organisational aspect as it would create employment etc. The reason it's coming to Galway is because in these 'tight' times, Galway was the only council that was interested in handing out money for a large event (The event was originally planned for the East coast)

JohnCleary

Chris_533976 wrote: »

This man is a legend, seems to me hes the only person in Galway with any drive to do something different.

You have no clue at all, do you? He handles the media aspect hence why his name is always quoted. A *hell* of a lot of organisation, inspiration, creativity and effort has been put into boating events all around the country (some of these being from galway) in the past year

skelliser

take a chill pill will ya!

JohnCleary

JohnCleary wrote: »

Galway injected 10million into the Volvo stopover, and got 55million back. So that's a return ratio of 5.5:1. Now, look at the event in Cork.. Cork injected 100k and saw 2.2 million back. That's a return ration of 22:1. So, from a financial point of view, the little event in Cork was a MUCH bigger success than the Volvo stopover. And at the end of the day, it's these ratio's that everything boils down to

Good post but the above is completely out of place.. It doesn't boil down to ratio if it's a one off event.. Unless you can repeat the Cork event at least 22 times, the Galway stopover was a bigger success.


Option A. Invest 10euro and get 100euro back. 10/1
Option B. Invest 100euro and get 500euro back. 5/1

If these are your only two options and you can't repeat the investment, Option B wins for pure profit. ( 400 v 90 )

JohnCleary

Deleted User wrote: »

Good post but the above is completely out of place.. It doesn't boil down to ratio if it's a one off event.. Unless you can repeat the Cork event at least 22 times, the Galway stopover was a bigger success.

The example I gave above, there is plans to have about 5-7 (or possibly more) of these PER YEAR, in different locations around the country. The 'vision' is that there would be festivals held around the National (and international) powerboat events based in Ireland, as opposed to just a race and then fecking off. The reason that a festival idea would work is because the racing itself is quite entertaining... much more entertaining than watching a few 70ft yachts tied to a pontoon anyhow!