Ashes a big hit for economy and tourism
An AAP report says that the Barmy Army and other English cricket fans helped inject $317 million into the Australian economy last summer as they watched their team get whitewashed in the Ashes series.
But Australian cricket boss James Sutherland is confident the all-conquering nature of Ricky Ponting’s outfit won’t deter international visitors from supporting their team down under in future years.
Cricket Australia (CA) and the federal government released an economic impact study which showed that the five Ashes Tests and the following triangular one-day series last summer generated $317 million and created 793 jobs.
The Test series helped to attract 37,000 international tourists, who each spent an average of $10,500 and stayed in Australia for 30 days.
“Obviously some of our English visitors may have been put off by the result, or the result may have been a disappointment to them,” said Sutherland.
“But I think what we’ve seen over the past decade … is that people come from far and wide to watch this cricket team play the brand of cricket that they do.
“There is no indicator we have at the moment to say that cricket and the public’s interest in cricket is being held back by the performances of the Australian cricket team.”
The next task is to attract more Indian and Sri Lankan fans for the Test series next summer.
“There’s no doubt it’s more challenging,” said Sutherland.
“Different countries have more of a propensity to travel and certainly we, in conjunction with Tourism Australia, are very interested to see whether we can get more Indians to come to the cricket than we’ve seen in previous years.
“Obviously the Indian economy is a growing economy and there’s a lot more travel going on there.”
Tourism Australia is about to open an office in Mumbai.
Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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