Ian Cusack
AN estimated €1.1m will be pumped into the Irish economy from hosting the Kickboxing World Championship in November of this year. With 800 fighters and about 400 staff and support descending on Dublin from November 20-27, not to mention the anticipated 1,000 fans, the capital will be flooded with fighting enthusiasts who’ll be forking out for accommodation, dining, transport and more.
Dublin’s City West Hotel and Conference Centre has secured the event and will host the contest in it’s convention centre as well as housing all competing athletes. Former wold champion and President of the Allstyles Kickboxing Association of Ireland (AKAI), Roy Baker believes the entire country stands to benefit.
“There will be 800 athletes coming, on average their accommodation spend is €500,000. If you take the number of support staff, their accommodation is €210,000, so that adds up to €710,000 on accommodation alone.
“That money is in the economy. It’s helping City West Hotel. It’s taking them out of receivership. We’re forecasting that each participant will spend on average €300 in Dublin during the week, that’s a reserved number. Add to that sum €50,000 generated from spectators and you’re looking at a rough total of €1.1m.”
With the event pulling so much into the economy, it’s hardly surprising Ireland had to fight off competition for the hosting privilege.
“The biggest difficulty you have in running any sporting event, the Olympics will tell you the same is that the only people with money these days are the Asian countries and the Russian Federations. We were at the SportAccord Combat Games in Beijing in 2010 where the Chinese Government paid 6.5m just to host the event.
“They paid for our accommodation. They paid for our food, our meals, they paid for the interpreters for all the athletes and staff. That’s the kind of level the sport is at over there.”
Should Ireland impress as hosts, they may have a chance to secure the very lucrative Junior World’s, taking place next year. While this might be great news for the tourism industry, Kickboxing Ireland’s limited funding will take a serious hit.
“If we are successful now we have a possibility of running the Junior World Championship next year, we’re in the bidding process for that right now but that’s much bigger. It has about 2,200 athletes and overall is about four times the size of this one so you’d be talking multiple millions; five, six, seven million into the economy but we’re only starting that now.
“It’s going to cost Kickboxing Ireland about €100,000 to host the event, so we are going to take a big hit on this. Kickboxing Ireland is a non-profit making organisation, run by a volunteer committee. Our objective here isn’t to make money.
“ The principal objective of us hosting this event is to bring our sport on the island of Ireland to a new level, let people who aren’t fully aware of how big we are know just how successful it is in this country. It’s about giving our fighters the opportunity to fight on home turf and have the opportunity that I never had, to win a gold medal on home soil.”
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/sYaYCM92Bhc/post.aspx
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