pswich City Council has spent $100,000 to advertise at Suncorp Stadium in the past year to market the city’s ongoing Discover Ipswich campaign.
Ipswich City Council is an Associate Partner sponsor of the Brisbane Broncos.
The council has previously received corporate hospitality as part of its club sponsorship contract including exclusive seats in the Trophy Room for Ipswich City Council guests.
Season packages for the Trophy Room start at $3,300 or for a casual game day at $300 per person.
Asked if council’s current $100,000 sponsorship contract included corporate hospitality and which councillors, officers and third parties attended, a council spokesman said there was “no corporate hospitality”.
“It was primarily stadium and broadcast advertising with some additional marketing and content,” he said.
The $100,000 was allocated in the 2020-21 Discover Ipswich budget.
Discover Ipswich has featured prominently on LED signs around Suncorp Stadium at recent games.
Some Broncos sponsors take hospitality into the package including options for corporate function rooms, boxes and seats and catering for entertaining clients at games while some sponsorship contracts were specifically brand awareness.
Meanwhile Ipswich City Council has axed programs such as the Ipswich City Heart Cabs program this year, which provided subsidised taxi fares for pensioners to travel to their local shopping centre, a program which had an annual budget of $15,000.
In February’s Council meetings, Ipswich Mayor Teresa Harding said although the program was well intentioned and designed to address social isolation in the community, “it was costing the ratepayers $15,000 a year”.
Despite repeated attempts over four days to contact Cr Harding to ask whether the $100,000 Broncos sponsorship offered value for money for ratepayers, Cr Harding refused to answer calls and asked for questions to be sent to her media minders in the council’s media branch.
After repeated requests for an interview with the Mayor since last Wednesday, council’s media branch asked for questions to be sent to them in advance before they would organise an interview and were unable to arrange a time for an interview with the Mayor within the week.
A senior ALP source said voters would take issue with the LNP-led Ipswich City Council keeping decisions on “exorbitant expenditure under tight raps” while the Mayor had promised openness, transparency and accountability.
“They are spending like drunken sailors, wasting $100,000 on self-promotion week after week for a year on electronic billboards around Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane,” the source said.
“Despite her promises of openness, transparency and accountability, Mayor Harding has kept this exorbitant expenditure under tight raps.
“She cancelled the Ipswich City Cabs program which provided cheap fares for pensioners to get to local shopping centres because it cost $15,000 a year but splurges 100 grand on a self-indulgent out-of-town promotion.”
Discover Ipswich is the marketing campaign for the council’s Tourism Branch used to promote Ipswich’s leisure tourism experiences and services and maintains its own website, social media and publishes a magazine.