Hundreds of riders were due to saddle up at the state-of-the-art complex for two of its flagship competitive events in July - the NNWSJC Winter Show Jumping Championships and Tamworth International Eventing CCN.

But both committees have since made the difficult decision to cancel the competitions amid the uncertainty of the latest COVID outbreak in NSW.

It's a "big blow" for Tamworth's economy, with the events ordinarily bringing visitors from right across NSW and southern Queensland, AELEC Manager Mike Rowland said.

Mr Rowland estimated the cancellations come at cost of over $300,000 to the Tamworth economy.

"So it's a big blow for us and for the community overall," he said.

"For the visitors that would be on the site for the two events we would normally see about 1500 visitor nights.

"We would have expected Tamworth to receive an economic contribution of about $332,000 off the back of those two events operating here simply through the numbers of visitors they bring into town."

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It's not all bad news, however, with hopes the biggest and richest indoor sporting horse event in the southern hemisphere - the annual National Cutting Horse Association (NCHA) Cutting Futurity - can make up for the town's losses at the end of the month.

That's if all goes to plan, and COVID doesn't throw event organisers a curveball, like it did last year.

Due to be held at AELEC from July 26 to August 9, the NCHA Cutting Futurity is massive for Tamworth, bringing in millions of tourism dollars.

"It's a really important event for the NCHA, but also for Tamworth, it's worth more than $3 million for Tamworth" Mr Rowland told The Leader.

"We didn't have that event at all last year because of COVID shutdowns, so they pushed their event until a little bit later this year in the hope that things would work out.

"We're communicating with NSW Health at the moment to try to work out what the event might be able to deliver."

AELEC remains fully booked-out right through until December, with plans for big events such as the Australian National Reigning Championships and NSW State Dressage Championships in August and the Tamworth Show in early September all going well.

So when a few cancellations occur, there is a lot to fall back on, Mr Rowland said.

"Luckily, we don't have too many small events, most of the events that occur at AELEC are of state and national significance and therefore they attract a lot of visitation and important contributors to Tamworth's economy," he added.

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