With the XXXX Gold Bunbury Cup moving to a Sunday timeslot in 2018, the Bunbury Turf Club is delighted by the result, which validated the shift from the traditional Thursday race meeting. With over 5 000 revellers enjoying Bunbury Cup Day, attendance was up 10% on last year.

The Bunbury Turf Club has engaged IER to establish independent data to measure the worth of the Bunbury Cup Carnival to the local community.   IER is a specialist business consultancy in research, strategy development, economic and social impact studies, and performance measurement in the sport, racing, tourism, and entertainment industries, and its findings show:

• Bunbury Cup Carnival attracted just over 6 141 spectators in 2018. Over 70% of all attendees at the Bunbury Cup Carnival were visitors to Bunbury. WA residents from outside the Bunbury region made up 69%.
• Bunbury Cup Carnival was responsible for bringing 2 949 individuals into the region who otherwise may not have visited. Of these event-motived visitors, 952 stayed at least one night in Bunbury, while the remainder were day trippers. Overall 2 893 visitor nights were created in Western Australia, with Bunbury being the beneficiary of close to 82% of these nights.
• Bunbury Cup Carnival generated a total expenditure impact of $2.30 million in Bunbury. Of this expenditure, $1.43 million was new money, brought to Bunbury directly as a result of hosting the Bunbury Cup Carnival.

Bunbury Turf Club CEO, Alex Doble, commented “IER were able to establish that a high percentage of attendees lived outside of the local area. We are pleased by this fact and obviously the flow-on benefit to accommodation and hospitality providers in Bunbury is gold. But what it also shows is that there is plenty of work to be done on the local front in boosting local support for and engagement with the event.”

“Bunbury has a population of 33 000 and what the data shows is that 5% of the local population attended the event. Over the next few years, if we can grow this figure to 15%, we are looking at 8 000 to 10 000 people on Bunbury Cup Day. This is our challenge.” added Doble.

Click on the report below to download the full PDF.