I really struggled to find the right song to accompany this week’s column about the Kanga Cup. I had to turn to Google to try to find a suitable song, and came up with The Soccer Song by CoComelon.
Every July, something remarkable happens here in Canberra. Thousands of young footballers, their families, and supporters arrive for the Kanga Cup — the largest youth football tournament in the Southern Hemisphere — transforming what is traditionally a rather quiet winter period into a bustling celebration of sport, tourism, and economic activity.
To put this into perspective: more than 1,000 matches are played across five days, with around 350 teams competing across age groups from under-9s to under-16s. Players and their families travel from across Australia and around the world, filling hotel rooms, restaurants, and attractions that might otherwise be waiting out the cold winter. That is a great tourism result.
The numbers speak plainly. When COVID forced a two-year hiatus, Canberra lost more than $10 million in tourism revenue. Ten million dollars — gone — simply because the tournament didn’t happen. If that doesn’t illustrate the Kanga Cup’s economic significance, nothing will.
And yet, despite this extraordinary contribution to the visitor economy, the ACT Government’s support for the event remains, to my mind, underwhelming. Capital Football currently receives around $30,000 in government funding to help run the tournament. Sounds reasonable, until you learn that the Government then charges more than that amount back in venue hire fees for facilities. It is the bureaucratic equivalent of giving someone an umbrella and then charging them for the rain.
I have not spoken to anyone from the Kanga Cup or Capital Football about this, my opinion is based purely on information in the public domain. But it seems to me that the Kanga Cup deserves better.
Events like Floriade and the Enlighten Festival rightly attract significant government investment and public attention. The Kanga Cup belongs in the same conversation. It delivers thousands of interstate and international visitors to Canberra at a time of year when the city genuinely needs them. It fills hotel rooms, supports hospitality workers, and showcases the capital to families who might never have considered Canberra as a destination otherwise. The economic and reputational benefits extend well beyond bed-nights and restaurant bills.
Delivered by Capital Football with extraordinary logistical effort — and sustained largely through team registration fees and sponsorship — the Kanga Cup is essentially doing the ACT Government’s tourism work for it. The least the Government could do is get out of the way, for example by exempting the event from facility hire charges altogether.
Better still, a meaningful increase in direct funding would allow the tournament to grow, attract more teams, and generate even greater economic returns for the territory.
Canberra is rightly proud of its major events calendar. But pride without investment is just good intentions. The Kanga Cup has proven its worth, year after year. It is time the ACT Government proved its commitment in return with genuine support.
