2017 Canada Summer Games turned $2.6-million profit

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This article was published 24/05/2018 (2163 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been nine months since the Aug. 13 closing ceremonies of the 2017 Canada Summer Games and the full analysis of the effect of the games are in: the event was a hit.

Not only was it the largest Canada Summer Games in the event’s 50-year history, it was likely the most financially successful.

It was so successful there was $2.6 million left to create a legacy fund.

“We just found out very recently. We still had some bills to play,” said games CEO Jeff Hnatiuk who is also president and CEO of Sport Manitoba. “We did not budget for a financial legacy.”

But it came about because of lots of good fortune. The slogan for the games was “Hottest Summer in Half a Century” and the weather held up so well that none of the contingency fund that had been budgeted to cover potential additional costs arising from unforeseen venue changes or weather-related damage had to be spent.

That, and community support and superior management of the $28 million budget created an excess that will be used for a variety of sports-related funding to be managed by a legacy fund trustee committee.

“In addition to saving the contingency fund, the fact we were over target on the corporate sponsor side of things was tremendous,” Hnatiuk said. “We had hit our sponsorship target about nine months out before the start of the games.”

The games also beat its budget for ticket sales, merchandise sales and even revenue that was not anticipated from food and beverage sales at the daily games Festival events at The Forks.

“We had it in the back of our minds that we wanted to leave a legacy because with major game like this legacy is a big part,” he said at the wrap up financial legacy announcement. “As we got into the process things fell into place.”

The event was held at the $25-million Canada Games Sports for LIfe Centre in the east Exchange District, the most prominent and obvious physical legacy of the games.

In the lead up to the games the widely mentioned expectation was that it would have a $153 million economic impact on the province. But the Sport Tourism Economic Assessment Model model used by Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance changed about a month before the games. It now uses indicators a different way and comes up with a number that is about 50 per cent of what the former version of the model would show.

Having said that, the final number crunching showed that the combination of spending by visitors and the host society generated about $77.9 million in economic activity. If that was doubled, as per the earlier version of the assessment model, it would be closer to $156 million.

In addition to the Sports for Life Centre, the 2017 Canada Summer Games left a number of legacy facilities including:

– the $195,000 Sargent Park Beach Volleyball Centre;

– the $900,000 Bison Butte Mountain Bike Course at Fort Whyte Alive;

– $2.4 million contribution to upgrades to the University Stadium track at the University of Manitoba;

– $700,000 enhancements to the Pan Am Pool.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca