THE Bathurst Business Chamber is looking towards the new Supercars event in February with cautious optimism after October's Bathurst 1000 left business owners disappointed.
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Supercars confirmed this week that a new event, the Bathurst 500, would be held at Mount Panorama as the season opener in February.
The news came after an announcement in October that Adelaide would not host the opening round, as has been the case since the early 2000s, and the 2021 championship would start in NSW.
Mount Panorama was tipped as the location, given that the 2021 Bathurst 12 Hour - which is owned by Supercars - had been cancelled, opening the door for a different event to take its place.
The championship will return to the mountain in October for the Bathurst 1000, which will be the only endurance race on the Supercars calendar.
Bathurst Business Chamber president Catherine Fitzsimons welcomed an event in February, but has concerns about how beneficial it will be for businesses.
"We just hope they are able to sell tickets and have more numbers than they did at the last event, the race in October; they undersold the number of tickets they had considerably, so the benefit to the town wasn't there," she said.
"It's great if there is an event and it's televised, that at least creates some momentum and activity, but it's only going to bring benefit to businesses in town if there is actually people coming to town physically in person to watch it."
The 2021 Supercars calendar is still a draft at this stage, with no information available yet on the number of people able to attend each event.
In October, the Bathurst 1000 race meeting was limited to just 4000 people a day and, as Ms Fitzsimons said, the full allocation of tickets wasn't sold.
Many of the borders were still shut at the time of the event and there were still multiple cases of community transmission of COVID-19 being recorded daily in NSW.
Ms Fitzsimons acknowledged crowds will likely be bigger in February, based on recent changes to travel and COVID-19 restrictions, however, said so much could change between now and then, making it difficult to predict what business can expect.
"But the fact that the race is on is great, and if we have a good Christmas season and we don't get a resurgence in cases, then I think people will be quite optimistic and much more comfortable with the idea of travelling," she said.
She does hope it will be possible to do events in the central business district (CBD) to help businesses draw in more patrons.