A batter for New Zealand takes a swing at a pitch from a Venezuelan pitcher in the final of the Men's World Softball Championships in front of a packed crowd. (paNOW Staff/Nick Nielsen)

By Nick Nielsen

Nearly $10 million generated across Canada

Economic impact from World Softball Championships brings in over $6 million for province

Aug 16, 2025 | 12:35 PM

It’s been a month since the Venezuelans defeated New Zealand to claim their first ever Men’s World Softball Championship in Prince Albert, and now event organizers have had time to examine just how much of an effect the event had on the local economy. The event brought in over $6.1 million into Prince Albert alone, and over $9.4 million into the country through other events played in.

Felix Casavant is the Finance Executive Director with Prince Albert’s World Cup Committee. With a budget of $1,128,855.40 to put the event on, Casavant has it totaled up that the event itself generated a profit of $150,000 that is all going right back into softball facilities and programs in Prince Albert.

“That $150,000 will be reinvested into our PMP softball diamond facilities and in the youth softball development with PA Minor Softball. That’s the benefit, hosting these types of events are so good for our community and just continually improves our facilities that are already second to none in the world.”

That comes from just the week long event itself. Through the six days of softball, the tournament averaged 3200 fans per day that paid to get in, and another 300 fans under the age 16 that got in for free if they were accompanied by an adult.

That was a big reason the tournament was such a success according to Casavant. Prince Albert’s organizing committee has seen similar tournaments run a model that prioritized revenue, but Prince Albert focused on putting butts in seats. Because of a number of grants like the Northern Lights Development Coroporation, Sask Lotteries, Sask Tourism, and the City of Prince Albert Destination Marketing Fund, tournament organizers were able to focus more on bringing people to the park rather than just paying the bills.

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“Majority of the time, the WBC are looking at larger centers where there’s one corporate sponsor and they don’t really care if there’s one or two fans in the stands, as long as all the bills are paid, right? But in our case, we wanted to focus on filling the park and and having these world class players play in front of a full crowd, and we’re really proud that we were able to accomplish that.”

Now when you start to add in the other expenses teams had to spend while in Prince Albert, hotels, meals, and other shopping done in the city, the tournament is estimated to have brought in an extra $6,967,589 into the province of Saskatchewan, $6,110,439 of which was generated right in Prince Albert. Considering that money was generated in about eight days from when teams, fans, and tournament officials started showing up until the time they left, Casavant says that is an amazing feat.

“It is when you consider, you know, we’re looking at a period of 6 to 8 days basically that that money comes rolling into our city. That is so good for our economy, for the city of Prince Albert. We don’t have that much tourism, so it’s events like this that bring this type of economic impact on our city, and so we’re we’re really pleased with that.”

Outside of Saskatchewan, the tournament had an impact as well. A lot of the teams that came to Prince Albert to compete in the World Championships made other stops in the country to play in exhibition games and qualifying tournaments, and that generated an extra $2,523,454 million around the country.

In total, that brings the economic impact of this tournament up to $9,491,043 across the country.

“They participated in tournaments all over Canada, so they’re bringing in that and the fans that are coming in, the airport fees, all those kinds of things were all worked into these things. So it doesn’t take much when you think about the cost of of meals, hotels, shopping, airport fees, all of those types of things come and were generating a lot of revenue for our country.”

There were some unexpected expenses that did hurt the tournament a bit. While teams and tournament staff were staying in Prince Albert, all of their meals and hotels were paid for by the hosting committee in Prince Albert. With some of those people staying for a full 10 days, unexpected hotel costs lead to an $80,000 hit they weren’t expecting.

“The biggest surprise was the hotel rooms. We originally had estimated about $80,000 less for hotels, so that took us by surprise when some of the hotels raised their rates from what they had indicated earlier. So that kind of impacted our budget, like an $80,000 hit is pretty extreme when you’re working with this these type of numbers.”