Auckland's America's Cup 1999-2000 : Winners and Losers Part 2

Abstract

We propose that hosting mega-events produces winners and losers in the destination's business community, particularly among tourism and leisure businesses. This 'micro' reality is obscured by economic impact studies, which produce 'macro' regional results. We discuss this with respect to Auckland's (New Zealand) experience hosting of the 1999-2000 Americas Cup yacht race. We first overview academic literature from a winners and losers perspective, noting that cities mostly win from hosting events but that the methodology for establishing the size of the winnings obscures the local-scale economic reality. Next we present a chronology of the Auckland experience in a before-during-after sequence, showing that the City mainly won. In the third section we adapt the findings of the "ofiicial" ex post economic assessment to a winners and losers perspective; this reveals tourism itself was only a middling reason for the Cup's financial success and that the implications of switching behaviour by Auckland residents were large but went unanalysed. We then present the results of our survey of tourism and leisure businesses located in downtown Auckland and several "cafe suburbs". Our results showed downtown businesses experienced small windfall profits, but the suburbs saw a transfer effect from clientele abandonment Our conclusions stress that mega-event impact analysis should be better grounded in the reality of businesses affected by the event. Our overall conclusion stresses that both 'macro' and 'micro' studies are required for planners to effectively anticipate, and prevent, losses to local businesses.