At the Vincent Community Board meeting on Monday, Otago Cricket chief executive Michael Coggan spoke in support of an application for another grant to bring T20 Super Smash cricket to Molyneux Park, in Alexandra, this year.
Last year the board gave a $10,000 grant to help with broadcast towers and consent costs from its promotions budget. At the time, Mr Coggan said they had a three-year agreement to broadcast the games. including into international markets such as Australia and the United States.
Council media and marketing manager Alison Mason presented a late grant application for funding at the meeting.
The report said despite correspondence confirming a one-year grant only, Otago Cricket incorrectly believed the grant had been approved for three years. They had noted their desire from a multi-year commitment on the original application and that was why they had not applied by the closing date this year.
Council policy is that promotion grants are only for one year.
Unfortunately for Otago Cricket, the board had already allocated all the funds in the promotion budget and there was nothing to give. The board declined to refer the application to council as it would have had to go into reserves to find the money.
Board chairwoman Tamah Alley said the cricket was a great event for the community, especially during the summer holidays, but that was the reality of funding rounds at the moment.
After the meeting Mr Coggan said he was philosophical about the outcome.
"It won’t change anything ... It’s the challenging environment we are in."
The televised games would still go ahead, he said.
Sight screens were the biggest cost factor and impacted last year with an unbudgeted costs of $50,000 for scaffolding as the sight screens at Molyneux Park were found to be inadequate for television broadcast.
With three double header matches being played, two pitches were required, ensuring the broadcast towers had to be wider, the report said.
Mr Coggan said the sight screens would continue to be an issue that was hard to resolve. Apart from that Molyneux Park was an excellent venue.
It would cost "in the low $100,000s" to build sight screens needed for television broadcasting and the size made a mobile solution unlikely.
Bringing cricket to the regions was always going to involve a "little bit of a loss" but Otago Cricket was committed to growing the sport’s audience, he said.
