Coast to host world's best young touch football players until 2020
Some of Touch Football Australia's main events will remain based on the Sunshine Coast for a further four years, ensuring thousands of participants and their friends and family continue to come to our region.
The world's best young touch footballers have descended onto Sunshine Coast Stadium this week for the 2017 Harvey Norman Youth Championships and School Series with hopes of securing an elusive national title.
They also another reason to be excited.
Sunshine Coast Council and Touch Football Australia has extended the existing hosting rights agreement for a further four years.
This year's event makes the 10th occasion the NYC format has been conducted on the Sunshine Coast.
The NYC along with the event’s wider five-day event program, attracts thousands of visitors to the region during the period and will feature another innovative format to the overall program this year.
The overall five-day multi-event program features the Harvey Norman National Youth Championships, the Harvey Norman School Series Cup, the Alliance Cup and Masters Trans-Tasman Series.
Tourism, Sports and Events Portfolio Cr Jason O'Pray welcomed the extension of the agreement with Touch Football Australia.
“Touch football is booming in Australia with participation numbers and popularity growing rapidly, so it’s terrific to have this national event for the sport staged on the Sunshine Coast,” Cr O'Pray said.
“Over the course of this partnership agreement, thousands of players, family members, supporters and officials will come from all corners of Australia to participate in the championship.
“We are expecting to welcome a huge influx of guests over the coming week, with many expected to stay on for the start of school holidays.
“Our partnership agreement, is expected to deliver fantastic economic benefits for our local businesses and also provide great exposure that will generate future tourism interest and opportunities for our region.”
Incoming Touch Football Australia chief executive Steve Mitchell said the partnership agreement was a very positive outcome for the sport and pivotal in shoring up the event’s ongoing success and future.
“It is wonderful to have such strong support from regional councils, and government generally, to assist our sport with funding and thereby hosting and staging of major events,” he said.
“The Sunshine Coast Council are clearly leaders in this regard with their partnership of a number of highly visible and progressive events, including our showpiece youth events: the Harvey Norman National Youth Championships and School Series.
“We see council as not only partners of the event but certainly also key partners of the sport; helping build this event property, its identity and future growth and tourism visitation prospects.
“And as we understand well the positive impact to the visitor economy that our major events have on regions such as the Sunshine Coast, we’re only too happy to extend the great messages and share the stories our participants have in destination."