Spat over golf sponsorship

Council to give $40k to PGA event

THE Toowoomba Regional Council will give tens of thousands in unspent community grants funding to boost the prizemoney of a major professional golf tournament.

In a move that has led to calls for a review into sponsorship allocation, the councillors voted on Tuesday to again sponsor the annual Queensland PGA Championship and Golf Queensland Country Week Championship from February 10-21 for $40,000.

The council, which has sponsored the event since its inception, will give $14,000 from its sports tourism grant program (which has an allocation limit of $15,000 per application), and $26,000 in unspent community grants.

Councillors amended the motion so the second sum of money would be factored into its budget review in March if community grants were fully subscribed.

The Queensland PGA

Championship is now a major tournament worth $652,000 to the Toowoomba economy last year, while the Country Week Championship injected another $150,000 and attracted 100 extra golfers.

The major tournament was also broadcast on online platform PGA TV, which attracted 242,000 viewers.

Event hosts the City Golf Club applied for a $40,000 sponsorship with the TRC last year, of which $25,000 was used to increase the prizemoney.

“The $25,000 sponsorship request was linked to a requirement by the PGA for City Golf Club Inc to increase the prizemoney from $125,000 to $150,000, which is the prizemoney level at which the PGA TV broadcast is included in the hosting agreement,” the council report said.

The club made the same request for this year’s event.

But some councillors took issue with the use of community grant funding to sponsor an event that had grown beyond a community sporting event.

“The sports tourism grant (part) is fine, but we have small community applications that come that have no other way to get funding, and we give them a percentage of what they ask,” Cr Anne Glasheen said prior to the motion amendment.

“I can’t support it with wording that has anything to do with community grants.”

Cr Mike Williams also questioned the council’s priorities in regard to sporting events.

While he supported the PGA event, environment and community chair Cr Geoff McDonald said the council would need to examine how it provided sponsorship.

“Sponsorships need to be treated separately from community grants,” he said.

“What we do have is an opportunity to fund it through a budget request.

Cr McDonald pointed out that unspent grant funding went back into consolidated revenue.