A decision by Gunnedah Showjumping Festival organisers to embrace social media has saved the annual event from being scrapped and given it a youth injection.
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Gunnedah Show Society president Rob Witts said the society upping its social media game not only saved the event but boosted the number of participants compared to last year.
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Witts said: “We advertised it better this year on the social media.
“Beforehand I think we were relying on the fact that because we were the week prior to Tamworth [the NSW Indoor Showjumping Titles] or the week after Tamworth … people would associate the two and come to [the Gunnedah] event.”
The society promoted this year’s event on the Tamworth-based North and Northwest Showjumping Club’s Facebook page.
Witts said: “We’ve got a lot better entries than last year … We were expecting to not get enough numbers to run.”
He said there were more than 120 riders entered this year compared to 74 last year.
He added: “What it’s [Facebook] done is brought a lot of competitors with younger competitors – mums with kids.
“Whereas that smaller ring, under a metre height, last year was very low in competitors and this year it’s the highest ring in competitors.”
“It’s looking very good,” he added.
Witts said the society lost “quite a bit of money” on running last year’s festival.
“The Show Society doesn’t run on a lot of profit. We didn’t want to do the same thing [lose money] two years in a row,” he said.
