The TT and Festival of Motorcycling bring in £31.7m to the wider Manx economy and support 815 jobs.

That’s the conclusion of the second Cabinet Office report on the economic impact of the two motorsport festivals, which will be laid before next week’s Tynwald sitting.

The first report, published in June 2018, focussed on the impact the two events have upon the government.

It found that while the TT generated a net income of £605,000, the Festival of Motorcycling incurred a net expenditure of £835,000.

After shared costs required by both of £725,000, the net cost to government of both events was £955,000.

But the second report attempts to quantify the impact both events have on the wider economy.

It concludes that ’value added’ to the island from the events is £31.7m, of which £24.6m is generated by the TT and £7.1m by the Festival of Motorcycling.

This equates to 17% of the total annual contribution that the tourist accommodation, catering and entertainment and retail sectors make to the island’s national income.

The figures are based on surveys of visitor expenditure which found the TT and FoM accounted for £44m of visitor spending, which is 39% of the annual total.

Those 61,000 visitors that attend the two events spend the equivalent of 98,000 visitors.

And the report notes: ’Resident spending during the events is not possible to assess and therefore the value to the economy is likely to be higher than stated £31.7m but it is not possible to quantify.’

A spend of £44m could be supporting up to 815 jobs in the island’s economy, amounting to £1.06m in government income, the report concludes.

The report found no data to support the concept of ’TT Escapers’ being any greater than at other times of the year, with resident departures during June not markedly higher than in other months.

But it accepts that the events do present difficulties to other sectors of the economy due to the road closures, which either limit customers’ access to them, or their access to customers.

It notes a comparison between the 2018 TT, which ran to schedule, while last year’s Festival of Motorcycling was disrupted by bad weather, which caused racing to be postponed to other days.

And the report also acknowledges the potential human cost of the events, with an average of two competitors per year being involved in fatal incidents, alongside members of the public, where there is typically three fatal incidents and 19 that result in serious injury.

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