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The numbers didn't quite add up this time


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So it does seem that the AC spectacle came out at a 28 cent loss for every dollar spent. All up 156 million from the public purse.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/447287/america-s-cup-new-zealand-made-156m-loss-on-hosting-event

Here's a gem

Quote

We were pleasantly pleased with the results. We've come through Covid - it was an amazing achievement for the event to happen at all so the result is surprisingly good," Hill said.

Remind me next time how good it feels when I spend 156m of your money on a circus 🤣 then instead of the promised big encore, they leave town!

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My take on it is a large amount of that headline number is for work that needed doing at some stage to improve the cities infrastructure into the future but the AC and APEC meant that the development of it was brought forward. Very little of the money was spent on organising and holding a regatta. There's some pretty slanted anti AC interpretation of the numbers I thought. Did anyone think that the return from holding the Cup was really going to pay for the new seawall, Ferry Building plaza upgrade, stooping Wynyard Wharf from falling into the sea, removing the remainder of the tanks and the Daldy Street stormwater outfall?

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I think the best way to cut through the confusion is simply to recognise that you could view the event through several different lenses with different outcomes as a result:

1. Infrastructure - probably overall good outcome. As far as I’m aware nothing significant was built that is a dead asset ‘white elephant’ ie we can enjoy future use from the new assets for other events or services (not just AC)

2. Global spectator event - a world-class event took place in NZ despite Covid and took place successfully. Good outcome.

3. NZ spectator event - we enjoyed a world class event on our doorstep (plus we won it). Some non-$ social dividend ‘feel good’ benefit. But that might be largely lost again if next event moves offshore?

4. Event $$$ return - poor outcome ie a material loss (but not sure exactly what the true event loss $ is vs the infrastructure costs which were due later anyway)?

And although no.4 (the event ledger) is a negative it’s probably a tiny rounding error compared to what the poor Japanese are facing in Tokyo. They are likely staring down the barrel of a multi-billion dollar loss being forced to ‘host’ an Olympics they don’t really want with no spectators to pay for it. Poor buggers. When consider that I reckon we got off lightly.

There might be some other lenses to look at the event through but overall I’d struggle to label the whole thing a disaster, especially given the unforeseen circumstance of Covid when the event was originally was planned.

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The general negativity in the media is disappointing, but not unexpected.

Covid buggered it up right royally. Agree or not, this pack of fear mongering clowns in power not letting in world media, youth competitors and super yachts really cost the city.

That been said, with no covid al of these would have happened and the numbers would tell a very different story

18 youth teams were entered for the Youth Americas cup...which would have given the squaddie a decent bucket of cash to spent elsewhere, instead YD had to suck the kumara on the 1 boat they built. Each team would have had all its support crews/families..

7 J class had confirmed, each comes with its own superyacht.... each superyacht has its own helicopter...and each helicopter has to get serviced

4 of the original 12m class were actively talking about coming...they to would had probably had a superyacht in tow

Other superyachts....

Other yachts in general. I remember dating a crew of a 50 footer when it was last here, they sailed from San Fran to get amongst it and do charters.

The Sydney-AKL race would have happened.

All of these boats would have had large numbers of crew and guests... gst on the food bill alone would have probably paid for the event.

Loss of APEC as a sideshow....

General overseas paying spectators.

I guess my point is, covid sucked the cash out of the event, and not even onion layers of local and national bureaucracy would have stopped the money splashing around, no matter how hard they tried.

 

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Any public figure like Dalton has will have supporters and detractors, he has done an absolutely remarkable job winning the cup back and defending it. Team New Zealand is an organisation that people want to work for and that says a lot about the culture, thats not what we are discussing though.

If I recall TNZ demanded money from the public, so we invested in the defence expecting that if they won that TNZ would host a second defence here. Covid threw a force majeure spanner into the works so the promised spin offs for the local economy didnt happen this time. You could say that it was a punt, TNZ could have lost but they didn't so its in your face that with the ability to hold the cup again in AK, recover losses and reap all the benefits of a post pandemic environment that they instead chose to head offshore. Make what you want of that behaviour but its nice to have no tank farm so there is that.

 

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