It's the bottom of the ninth for the World Baseball Challenge and the money bases aren't loaded.
The 2013 edition of the bi-annual tournament scheduled for Aug. 13 to 23 is facing cancellation if organizers are not able to pull together at least $60,000 in less than a week.
Speaking to the media at the WBC venue, Citizen Field, committee member Don Gowan said the organizing team came to this conclusion after a Monday night meeting.
"[There was] a lot of debate at the committee level... about being very responsible - fiscally - to make sure that if we're going to go ahead with this, that it will break even or make some money," Gowan said. "We don't want to be in a scenario where it could lose money and not end up paying vendors and suppliers and other people that are crucial to this event."
If the necessary financial commitments aren't in place in the next four or five days, Gowan said the committee will reconvene to discuss cancelling the tournament.
The events budget problems began in 2011, when the tournament's opening game was rained out and poor weather dogged the rest of the week. WBC co-chair Jim Swanson said the tournament lost more than $50,000 that year.
"We know that if opening night and the Canada-Chinese Taipei game that was never played were played, based on our game day operations and how successful they've been through the previous two events, that shortfall would have been made up through those games," Swanson said. "We lose opening night, that's a real significant hit to your revenues."
Further compounding the tournament's money difficulties are the sheer magnitude of sponsorship requests flooding the city right now.
"The corporate sector, the people of the north have been very good. There just happens to be a lot of asks out there," said Gowan.
Mayor Shari Green noted that last week council approved a $10,000 contribution to the event, which was the first of many funding requests council has said yes to in the past couple of years. She encouraged the city's corporate community to do the same.
"There might be some companies and corporations and folks out there that don't have an opportunity to partake in an event like the Canada Winter Games and sponsorship there. Maybe this is a better fit for them," Green said. "I'm hoping they'll be looking at this... and realize and appreciate the significance of this event and that they'll make the call... and lend their support in any way they can."
The mayor also said she appreciated that the committee was taking a close look at the situation and not willing to move ahead with something that might leave them further in the red, but that she would hate to see the event cancelled.
Tourism Prince George CEO Aiden Kelly said the World Baseball Challenge, in addition to being an economic generator for the city, is also key in showcasing Prince George's ability to put on world-class events.
According to Swanson, it takes about $400,000 to put on the World Baseball Challenge with half of those funds coming from corporate sponsorships. The rest comes from game day operations which includes ticket sales, concessions and merchandise.
Game tickets and tournament passes are available at Ticketmaster outlets.
"We've been out knocking on doors for a long time and certainly it takes a long time for these relationships to come to fruition," Gowan said. "So we've had a great return on sponsorship from previous years - a lot of the people have re-upped again. It's just one of those challenges to get some additional funds to cover that gap."
If the 2013 event doesn't go forward, it could spell the end of the World Baseball Challenge in Prince George.
"My job is to recruit the teams and I would have a very hard time letting them all know it's been cancelled with less than two months to go and trying to revisit that in two years, I think that would be a very, very difficult sell," said Swanson. "So I think you could make the argument that it would be done forever."
