Community expected to have say on Newcastle 500’s future

The fate of the Newcastle 500 Supercars street race is expected to be determined next year following a community consultation strategy, if voted through by council.

City of Newcastle councillors voted at last night’s council meeting on whether or not to place a draft strategy on public exhibition before, during and after the 2023 Newcastle 500 Supercars season opener on March 10-12.

Results from the meeting are yet to be made public, but if voted through City of Newcastle will compile a report based on the community’s feedback and insights from a six-week consultation strategy, which will be used to inform the decision about any contract extension for the event.

Next year’s Newcastle 500 will be the first since 2019, but last under the existing agreement between Supercars, City of Newcastle and Destination NSW for the event which first arrived in 2017.

Across the three years held the race attracted an average attendance of 123,166 and produced an average of $35 million in ecumenic output per event according to a formal third party research from Newcastle Major Events Evaluation, EY Sweeney in 2021.

CEO Jeremy Bath said City of Newcastle is committed to undertaking broad community consultation prior to entering into any agreement should Destination NSW and Supercars propose a five-year extension to keep the street race going.

“The draft community consultation strategy has been developed by KPMG and includes an evidence-based methodology to understand the opinions of the Newcastle community and ensure that key stakeholders have their voices heard and considered,” Mr Bath said.

“At this time, no decision has been reached by any of the three parties on an extension of the race beyond March 2023.”

Newcastle Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes said the future of the race is a decision of the NSW Government in the first instance as the consent authority for the race.

“Any inclusion of Newcastle as a potential host city for another five years will be subject to broad community and stakeholder consultation, and a decision of the elected Council after the March 2023 event,” Cr Nelmes said.

The draft consultation strategy proposes gathering feedback from the community about the return of the Newcastle 500 in a number of different ways from telephone, online and in-person surveys.

The in-person surveys are proposed to take place around the street circuit’s precinct on the city foreshore to provide an insight into attendees’ behaviours.

Three post-event stakeholder workshops with community, business and industry representatives are also part of the process.

Once the results are gathered a report will be compiled and prepared for Council mid next year.

If voted through, the outcome of the community consultation will have a major say on the future of Supercars’ newest season opener.

The extensive and community based consultation and analysis process is outlined in a publicly available 27-page document, follow link here, created by the City of Newcastle, who have a mantra of inform, consult, involve and collaborate. 

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