Community Impact of World Rally Championships 2009 on a Small Australian Town - Research Paper Example

Running head: SOCIAL IMPACTS OF MOTORSPORT Community Impact of World Rally Championships 2009 on a Small Australian Town Motorsport events have the capacity of influencing communities living around the places where the event occur. The paper looks at the social impact that the 2009 World Rally Championship had on a small community of Kyogle, during the Australian stage of the event. The results reveal that despite the general perception that the community benefited from the events occurrence, residents identified negative impacts along the route of the Rally. The paper equally identified division in the community as a key issue that provided negative publicity and issues of management for the organizers of the event and the host country. These affected the event’s continual management. Community Impact of World Rally Championships 2009 on a Small Australian Town Large-scale sports events need effective management to avoid potential visitor’s impact on the communities and environment that locals reside. The influences can either be direct or indirect and can infiltrate the relations in the community. Large-scale events like those found in motorsports are commonly known to be carried out among communities so as to attain a greater good. Hence the economic and promotional benefits overshadow the negative effects on the community. The research aims at exploring the social impacts of the World Rally Championships (WRC) 2009, in the State of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Kyogle Shire is one of the global locations for the World Rally Championships. The social impact study is a key aspect that forms a section of the triple bottom line approach that is desirable in the assessment of sporting events. After the realization of these negative impacts, governments, event managers, and community groups can appropriately minimize the negative impacts of future events. Further, they can leverage the benefits that are positive which are brought about to the community by events of this magnitude. The paper presents an examination of the social and cultural benefits and costs to a given rural community along the World Rally Community global route. Further, it proposes that social research for the future should be allowed in other locations of the events since cultural and social contexts and the physical environment where the event occurs differs significantly. Discussion Background The World Rally Championship is a motorsport event that is international. The Championship is staged yearly in twelve countries; it attracts approximately between eighty thousand and two hundred and ten thousand spectators to every single event (Hassan et al., 2009). The Championship being broadcasted in over two hundred and twenty-eight various countries and is estimated to reach approximately six hundred and thirty-three million viewers globally. However, despite its global popularity, there is no significant research examining the event and its effect in its occurrence places. The Championship has occurred in its current form from 1973. The Federation International I’Automobile (FIA) regulates it; the Federation is the international body that governs motorsport in the globe. The attraction of the championship entails challenging the global top rally drivers to race in various terrains around the world (Potkanowicz & Mendel, 2013). Finland, Australia, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland are among the countries where the event occurs. Each rally is made up of between fifteen and twenty-five special stages. These stages run on temporarily closed public roads; the aim of closing the road is to enable drivers to finish each phase in the shortest time possible. Between phases, participants drive to and from the normal roads as they observe normal traffic rules. By this, the event is different to several other motorsports that are carried out on specific motorsport speedways and tracks. The event has a complex logistic compared to other motorsport events. In 2009, twenty-one cars participated in the event, with an equivalent number of drivers and members of the crew. Equipment used in the events were transported from one location to the next either by air or by the sea. International media personalities closely followed them to cover the stages of the event. Selection of the race stages and regions for the event happen by negotiations between the government of the countries involved and the World Rally Championships. There are no official bidding towards the hosting of the event. Instead, there are negotiations between the World Rally Championships, authorities of motorsport and agencies of the governments. The process of the negotiation of the 2009 stage in Australia involved several agencies. The State Government through the Events NWS acted as a key agency in the attraction and securing of the Annual World Rally Championships. Since Events NWS is a corporation that is privately owned, it had the right to carry out its operations without regard to the normal codes of conduct and reports required by agencies of government. Therefore, it secured an agreement of commercial in confidence without public scrutiny with the organizer of the event. In the course of the negotiations, the local communities were not consulted while the agencies of the local public sector such as tourism, government, and recreation received an insufficient consultation. The state government informed the local government’s council that they were to host the event. Further, they claimed that a consultation opportunity with the event manager of Australia was to be unveiled to community groups after the making of the decision. To make sure the event proceeded, the NSW Government enacted the Motorsport Bill 2009 that would enable the occurrence of the motorsport event known as World Rally Championships (Hassan et al., 2009). These would allow the development of temporary works in national park areas, forests, and crown lands and may carry out the activity despite its prohibition under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974. The process of planning the process led to significant unrest between the locals, community groups, and the State Government. The reason for the protests was why the event had to take place in a region with national animals and a region known to be a colony of the koala. Local environmentalists organized and conducted heavy protests before and during the rally. Kyogle has a population of six thousand seven hundred and eighty residents in a range of diverse and distinctive communities who reside in towns, farms, and on lifestyle properties. Kyogle consists of the World Heritage listed rainforests of Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves of Australia (CERRA) and other national parks and state forests. The major industries situated in the Shire include tourism, agriculture, and forestry, and because of this, the environment that surrounds the town supplies most of the economic wealth. The introduction of the strategy of Eco-tourism by the Council of Shire of Kyogle is a reflection of this fact and emphasizes the importance of the environment to the local community. In recent times, the town has gone through several social and economic setbacks including floods, shutdowns of the forestry industry and timber mill fire. The introduction of the World Rally Championship to the region brought the view that social and economic boosts would be witnessed in the small town in the wake of the several negative events that befell the town. Some people viewed the rally as an environmental problem that was not supposed to be allowed. Despite the dispute, the World Rally Championship event got held in September of 2009 in the small towns of Kingscliff, Kyogle, and Murwillumbah. Based on data collected by Events NSW, a review by the Homebush Racing Authority realized that the event was successful (Gifford, 2009). It was estimated to have generated approximately between $A 14 million and $A 16.9 million for the NSW area of the Northern Rivers. In addition, the event had attracted approximately nineteen thousand unique visitors, two thousand one hundred and forty-five from overseas, and twelve thousand three hundred and eighty-eight from interstate. Equally, the event engaged approximately fifty-four million television audiences with a media value of tourism estimated at 2.3 million. Finally, there was the realization that the event had little environmental impact and did not result in an increase in traffic offenses. Because of the controversial introduction of this motorsport in the region, there has been the initiation of several studies aimed at identifying the social benefits and costs of the Rally to the people of this locality. The studies would help to understand the implications of the event. The social implications of Motorsport Whereas there is much information on the social impacts of events, there is the inadequacy of international academic research in the motorsport field. With the exception of the Australian work, there are insignificant international studies in this field. It is a common occurrence for the government to hire consultants to evaluate economic impact, but it is not common to assess the social impact. Social studies that exist focus on the motorsport Grand Prix. These studies focus on the 1991 Gold Coast Indy, the Formula One, Australian Grand Prix, the 1986 Adelaide Grand Prix, the Macao Grand Prix, and the Singapore Grand Prix. These events also use public amenities and roads like toilets, pathways, and public spaces unlike the fixed raceways found in speedway racing (Lohmann et al., 2014). The studies find the most critical negative social impact on the population as being linked to worries of maintenance of public facilities and other related inconveniences. Further, the study realizes people perceive these Grand Prix events positively. They view them as promoting tourism, economic stimulus and pride in the cities in which they take place. Researchers have equally realized that impact can vary depending on the segment of the community. Fascinatingly, it has been realized that protests witnessed in Australia were not prevalent in the event that took place in Macau following the culture of maintaining respect for the authority. After examining the benefits and costs of community and personal impacts that resulted due to the occurrence of the rally, an identification of personal and community impacts followed. Personal impacts established as those linked to instances in which the event influenced the everyday life of people, as well as people’s social relations to their neighbors. Personal impacts did not include personal impacts of a psychological nature (Cheng et al., 2010). Community impacts entailed items linked to the wellbeing, image and social cohesion of the community in which the staging of the event had affected. The result suggested that most of the residents viewed the event positively, both in terms of its impact on the community and on their lives. Perception of Positive Impact People who held the perception that the Rally had a positive impact perceived the main benefit the community got was the economic contributions the town received and the upsurge of visitors and tourists. The economic boost for the town cannot be viewed as being a social impact but instead as an economic impact. Equally, there were opinions that the motorsport brought money into the little town that helped small businesses since it increased cash flows. The direct influence provided by the occurrence of the event are key in the framework of a small town. Instead, they cannot be equally substantial in the context of regions of the World Rally Championships that are much wealthier. In the small Australian community, the occurrence of the event did offset some of the losses that resulted in due recent floods, fires, and closure of industries. Results from the interviews with key stakeholders suggested that the key success of the event was that it availed a focus for interaction and community action, between the community and the new visitors. Voluntary community groups such as Rotary, Apex, Lions Club and State Emergency Services that availed critical services like helping the visitors with their parking, provision of food service, first aid and ticket collection benefitted. Several people spoke positively of the benefits attributed with the rally. For instance, the event facilitated the collection of over $A6, 000 raised for the community hospital (Cahill, 2010). The motorsport event enabled the town to manage to collect a lot of money from new visitors. Perception of Negative Impacts Whereas the event had a positive impact on the majority of the residents of the small town, others witnessed personal negative impacts to their social constructs of the community and their personal properties. The study asked people about the impact that the event had on their personal lives and their households. Items used by the survey included; inconveniencies, access to their property or land, dust or noise and damage to property. The results obtained from the study suggested that indeed a small number of the total population were indeed affected by the occurrence of the motorsport event. Among the specific impact identified by the residents included wildlife disturbances, helicopter noise, livestock disturbance, police presence, and traffic accidents. Mixed experiences of individuals and reactions from the motorsport event among people affected by dust, loss, noise. And those people who enjoyed an experience that is entertaining or received a boost in their economic activities led to conflict and division in the small town. Community conflict and division came up in response to both the planning and the event itself. A feeling that the government had failed to foresee the possible division and conflict in the community between the supporters and the protestors existed among the locals. Conclusion In conclusion, the study evaluated the social impacts of the World Rally Championships as perceived by people. The study assessed the impacts based on data provided by a small Australian community. The majority of the people in the community were in favor of the event’s occurrence, despite the consequences of division and conflict in the community. The study highlights the social, economic, political and environmental background that surrounds an event that will have effects in the event. Particularly, the study realized that the political setting of the event, and the lack of community consultation, resulted in negative perceptions of the state government and the organizers. The implications of the study highlight the future development of the motorsport event, and the development of government policies that are responsible for the formulation of community consultation and engagement. Journal references Cheng, E., & Nigel, J. (2010)‘Residents Perception of the Social-Cultural Impacts of the 2008 Formula 1 Singtel Singapore Grand Prix’.Event Management, 14(2),91-106. Hassan, D., & Sean O.C. (2009). ‘The Socio-Economic Impact of the FIA World Rally Championship 2007.Sport in Society, 12( 6), 709-24. Potkanowicz, E., & Mendel, R. (2013). The Case for Driver Science in Motorsport: A Review and Recommendations. Sports Med, 43(7), 565-574. Book References Cahill, M. (2010). ‘A Review of the Impact on the Northern Rivers Region of the World Rally Championships 2009. Sydney: Homebush Racing Authority. Gifford, C. (2009). Motorsports. London: Wayland. Lohmann, H., & Röhrl, W. (2014). Legendäre deutsche Rallyes. Stuttgart: Motorbuch. Read More