Irvine: Gift still has a future

Stawell Athletic Club committee members are confident the Stawell Gift will retain its status as Australia’s most prestigious footracing carnival despite a steep drop in prizemoney this year.

The club announced last week it would lower total prizemoney for its men’s and women’s gifts to $25,000 each, with the winners of both races pocketing $17,000.

It is significantly less than the $40,000 offered to the men’s and women’s gift champions for the past four years.

The club has explained that a shortfall of sponsorship money had resulted in a smaller prize pool for athletes.

The gift has been without a naming rights sponsor since 2016.

Stawell Athletic Club committee member Robert Irvine said he was not concerned for the future of the gift.

“Because we’re an incorporated body we have to make sure we have sufficient funds to run the event,” he said.

“I don’t think the long-term future is in doubt because we wouldn’t put the event in danger.

“We’re concentrating very heavily on running this year’s gift as the best possible event we can have. We’re planning for an event as big if not bigger than we ran last year because we have great faith that athletes will support a really important carnival.

“It still is the richest footracing carnival in Australia, with prize money well over $90,000 all up.”

Northern Grampians Shire Council announced it had offered financial help to Stawell Athletic Club to help cover the shortfall in prize money.

Mr Irvine said the club was considering the council offer, but was wary of conditions that came with the funding.

“We’re still in discussions with the Northern Grampians Shire and we will continue to work positively with them, as we will with the State Government,” he said.

“Any agreement must come with some attachments that we can handle.

“There may be some conditions that we need to be very careful of.”

Northern Grampians mayor Kevin Irwin said the council was committed to working with the club.

“The council put an offer on the table which is still there,” he said.

“Whether we get an agreement before this year’s gift I don’t know, but we will continue to work with the club to try to get the prizemoney back up to where it should be.

“There are a couple of things we want the Stawell Athletic Club to do that we will work through with them.

“The council wants to see the gift stay as a prestigious event, we want to assist the Stawell Athletic Club and we want to see the long-term sustainability of the gift.”

Tough competition

Mr Irvine said part of the difficulty of attracting a major sponsor came from an over-saturated sports media market.

“You have men’s and women’s cricket, men’s and women’s football, tennis and a whole range of other events,” he said.

“To fit into the scheme of that, we have to be able to offer a major sponsor all the benefits that we can.

“We generate a lot of press publicity, which was valued last year at more than $2-million.

“The shire estimates our impact as $4-million on the local economy.

“We’re important to the regional economy, but that’s not going to pay the bills.”

Mr Irvine said athletics might need to overhaul its image to compete with other sports for sponsorship money.

“It’s interesting – athletics has been trying to overhaul its image for a long time,” he said.

“It’s really about getting crowds in, which we do, and making sure we project ourselves in the community as best we can.”

Mr Irvine said the club would be able to offer its previous prizemoney pool if it attracted a major sponsor before the gift, which is from March 31 to April 2.