City council said yes Monday to a request from the 2013 World Baseball Challenge for $10,000 to help pay for bleachers.
The money was for temporary seating to help make the tournament a financially viable, said Jim Swanson, co-chair of the World Baseball Challenge.
"Currently there's about 450 useable seats - we'd have to charge about $150 a game at 450 seats to make it worthwhile,"said Swanson.
Tournament organizers have pointed to claims the event generated around $6 million in economic activity for Prince George over the last five years.
As a result, Mayor Shari Green said she was willing to take money out of their $40,000 economic development budget to support the WBC request.
In 2012 the city spent slightly more than $1,700 from that budget.
"Last year, council didn't have something that it felt it was prepared to assign those dollars to," said Green. "There are things we may choose to do with that money this year, and you saw an example of that with the World Baseball Challenge."
When asked by the mayor why the funding request only came through now, co-chair Shawn Rice said that there had been an assumption that the money had already been forthcoming from the city and that there was a timeline crunch to get things running.
The group said they are also feeling pressure from competing with the upcoming 2015 Canada Winter Games for sponsorship dollars.
Swanson said the WBC budget is also tight because of rain delays in 2011. That year the tournament lost three out of nine nights to the weather and one-third of its operational revenues.
Green said the city supported the WBC in its intial outing at Citizen Field in 2009 with almost $500,000 in staff time and contributions; bleacher rentals; and renovations to the fields.
"Two years ago the support was in, I think, the $50,000 range in terms of staff in-kind work and labour around field prep," said Green. "And so this year, we didn't budget anything for them."
The World Baseball Challenge returns to Prince George August 13-22.
