A sponsorship fiasco that left taxpayers footing a HK$1.5 million bill for the New Year's Eve countdown fireworks has prompted new measures that include widening the net for future sponsors of the extravaganza.
The Tourism Board vowed to seek sponsors through newspaper advertisements and secure sponsorships earlier in order to avoid a repeat of the frenzied scrambling for funds after two property developers decided, two months before the countdown, not to sponsor the event.
Henderson Land and Sun Hung Kai Properties, who had supported the show for four years, announced in October their decision to discontinue their sponsorships, but provided the same venue, the 88-storey Two IFC. In the end, the government and the Jockey Club each put up HK$1.5 million, while the board paid the remaining HK$5.5 million.
'The bill is not the most important part. Our top concern is that we would be left without a venue for staging fireworks,' board chairman James Tien Pei-chun said yesterday. 'To play safe, sponsorship [including the venue] for the countdown show will be finalised six months in advance instead of the usual two months we adopt for other events.'
The board would try to identify potential sponsors from diversified sources by placing adverts in major newspapers, Tien said.
In a separate initiative, ads will appear in seven newspapers this week inviting sponsorships for the board's upcoming events.
The unprecedented move is in response to lawmakers asking why the board tended to rely on the same funding sources instead of looking for new sponsors, Tien said.