A major financial gain for Windsor as a result of hosting the 2016 FINA World Swimming Championships.
The $11-million event was held last December at the WFCU Centre and brought in a surplus of $250,000.
According to a report before Windsor City Council on November 6th, the swimming championships, along with the FINA World Aquatics Convention, produced an economic impact of close to $36-million.
Both the federal and provincial governments contributed a total of $6-million to the event while the city's portion was about $3-million.
Lasalle's Kylie Masse at the Windsor 2016 FINA Championships, December 6, 2016 (Photo by AM800's Peter Langille)
Ward One city councillor Fred Francis says putting aside the financial benefits, there were other advantages to the region in hosting the championships. "There's many different ways to measure it as a success. In this regard, you're talking about a dollar surplus, a revenue surplus, so that's always good. But how do you put a dollar figure on the amount of children that were inspired to start swimming or were inspired by their Olympic champions or their Olympic heroes."
Mayor Drew Dilkens says the championships will be used to attract other events to the region. "It allows our EcDev folks at WEEDC {Windsor-Essex Economic Development Corporation}, it allows our folks who are selling tourism in the region at Tourism Windsor-Essex Pelee Island, to go out and use this event and talk about quality of life, and use this event as a catalyst to be able to bring other events and bring interest to our community."
"There was also a boost to local businesses," says Dilkens. "There was a lot of discussion about the cost of this event to this community and there is no doubt that $3-million is a lot of money but if you look at the amount of contracts that were written locally to businesses, over $4-million of contracts were let back to local businesses who benefited in our community."
The event also reached a global audience of 462-million people which Mayor Dilkens says is great exposure for the city.
Windsor was the smallest city ever to host the FINA World Swimming Championships. The event attracted more than 23,000 spectators.
With files from Teresinha Medeiros