Evocities MTB Series cancelled, Tamworth Mountain Bike Club will still hold race

Evocities, a collective marketing campaign encouraging people to make the tree change, cancelled its major event after only two years.

Despite host cities reporting a big jump in crowd numbers, a report found it was not viable after evaluating the success of last year’s series.

Tamworth Mountain Bike Club is keen to continue growing the sport in the city, and the club’s racing coordinator, Steve Mair, said the Evocities MTB Series had given it the platform to do so.

“We had a 30 to 40 per cent increase in rider and crowd numbers on the year before, so we believe we still have a following,” Steve Mair said.

“The decision doesn’t make a huge difference to us because will continue to get bigger and better.

“The essence of the Evocities series was to attract people from the cities to regional centres. We’ll still be advertising to the coastal cities and encouraging them to check out life in Tamworth.”

The club still plans to hold its five-hour Evocities race, possibly under a different name.

The Evocities MTB series had $80,000 in prize money in 2015 and $50,000 in 2016, but Mr Mair said the event would still be a draw card without the prize money.

“One of the things we found, was most people who came were weekend warrior, people who loved to mountain bike,” he said.

“The funding attracted some of the nation’s top riders, so we might not have as many top-end riders chasing money.  But we gave away about $10,000 in giveaways last year, which was separate from the prize money – half of that came from local business.”

Evocities spokesman Cr Kevin Mack, said the report made clear hosting another series in 2017 would have “resourcing implications”. “Surveys were distributed to each city’s mountain biking club and member council to seek their input, this information was considered in addition to entrant numbers and financial analysis in the report,” he said.

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