AVESCO chairman Tony Cochrane has gathered six of the historic Gold Coast Indy motor racing carnival’s most successful managers to ensure a successful event rebirth in October.
In anticipation of a throwback to Gold Coast motor racings’ ‘glory days’, previous event identities Shane Howard, Geoff Jones, John Howe, Ken Jeffress and Brett Murray have joined Cochrane to launch the new Gold Coast SuperCarnivale framework.
While the absence of a high profile international motorsport brand such as the Indy or A1 Grand Prix is evident, Cochrane says the team already considers the V8 Supercars an international brand.
“Our first two rounds of this year were shown to over 530 million homes in 150 countries. Live nearly throughout the whole of Asia; live throughout the whole of North America; live throughout Europe; live in New Zealand and of course live here in Australia on the Seven Network,” says Cochrane.
“I think that the racing will be truly spectacular and I think we’ll rate our pants off on TV. There’s lots of parts to this event that have just been left run down but we’re here to run them right back up again and that’s what we intend to do.”
Cochrane received an SOS call from the Bligh Government to take over management of the bungled A1GP event following the sacking of IMG. He says the expertise of the newly-formed management team will oversee the event return to the forefront of the Gold Coast’s tourism and entertainment industry.
Between the six businessmen, more than $250 million in major event tickets have been sold during the last 15 years.
“Let’s be honest, the previous event organisers had done a pretty ordinary job of running the event down and it’s no great shock that they were given the heave ho.” says Cochrane.
“We are only a three-day event not a four-day event so we won’t get them back to those actual numbers but I am very confident right off the bat in the first year that the three day crowd will be a very, very significant three day crowd.
“People forget that at last year’s event, when we stepped up and doubled-stinted at the last moment, Channel 7 had the best ratings they’ve had in years.
“So we want to bounce out of that this year and go even higher.”
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