Nick Hill: Tataki Auckland Unlimited CEO on Sail GP's debut in Auckland

Early indications suggest it has been a strong weekend for Auckland businesses following three major events. 

More than 25,000 people attended the inaugural Auckland League of Sail GP. 

What did the event do for Auckland city? 

Tataki Auckland Unlimited CEO Nick Hill joins the show to debrief on the weekend of sailing. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Australia may have taken the wind out of the Black
Foils sales, but certainly not the fans. More than twenty
five thousand people attended the inaugural Auckland League of Sale
GP and it's excluding those that are in the pubs,
or who are out on the water, or if you
were like me, who were just wandering around these CEO
Sir Russell Kurtz's signaled interest in a longer term deal
maybe five years, but beyond next year, a return to

(00:22):
Auckland remains a bit of a mystery. Nick Hill is
the Tataki Auckland Unlimited CEO. It's the council controlled organization
that does this stuff. He's with us this morning, Nick,
Good morning morning, Ryan. Hey, great event. You must be
pretty stoked.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Absolutely thrilled. It delivered on every aspect and more so
it was a huge success.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
What does this do for Auckland.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Very narrowly, it drives economically. If it's five million GDP
we estimated, I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than that.
It helps to attract visitors, It helps to tell the
story around who we are as a city and orkan
to to s get to enjoy the benefits of being

(01:11):
out and enjoying events and what it does to the city.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
The five million number you're talking about, where did the
number come from? Because MB had some problems trying to
calculate the net benefit of hosting events like this. I mean,
are these numbers actually reliable?

Speaker 2 (01:27):
It's look, there's there's a lot of challenges with how
you measure the value. I personally would say that our
number is conservatives the numbers using crisis we're a lot higher,
but it's a measure of through data that's collected by
an agency, Fresh and Flow, who calculate this for us.

(01:49):
So the number itself is kind of reliable, but it
doesn't retell the full story, and that's that's the challenge.
So we would argue the benefits are actually greater than that,
but we do take a conservative you of the numbers
that are provided, just simply because we of the credibility
of doing these things with decision makers.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Are you guys in talks to do a five year deal.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah. I spoke to Russell about it on Friday. He
raised with me his arguments are very sound. He's saying,
you do this regularly, have becomes something that people put
in their calendar, becomes associated with the city and everything
kind of works in and around it, and that is
certainly very appealing, very appealing to Auckland. You know, it's
part of our DNA.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
What does it cost us?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
So we paid a fee of a million for this event.
I think that that's probably a very reasonable number. And
you know, I've got no idea what we would be
talking about in the future. Our issue, there's a few issues,
but the prime issues around the future funding path for events.

(02:55):
It's an issue that people understand that since COVID, we're
really struggling to fund events in Auckland, and you know,
it's an area that needs to be resolved.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
And potentially five million dollars if we're looking at a
five million dere we could be looking at five million
dollars at a time when Wayne Brown's obviously taking a
bit of a wrecking ball to you guys, so.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Now he will look. No, Wayne's being very supportive. His issue.
His issue is primarily how you raise the funding and
he runs a wizard of levy.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
All right, Nick, thank you very much for that. Plenty
of water to go under the bridge, as they say,
Nick Hill, tantaky Auckland Unlimited CEO. For more from the
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