AusLeisure

Set to run over 12 days, the 2025 Sydney Royal Easter Show will open today presenting its annual mix of entertainment, agricultural displays and carnival rides for all ages. 

Featuring farmyard animals, competitions, rides, games, food stalls and showbags, new rides on display this year include the new Helter Skelter and the Sky Flyer XXL.

Showcasing Australian rural culture and providing a platform for farmers to exhibit their produce, this year’s Show marks the 125 anniversary of district exhibits.

The spectacular displays, built by large teams featuring thousands of items of fresh produce, originated in 1876 when three areas or ‘courts’ were set up in the Prince Alfred Exhibition Hall to display produce from several parts of the colony in the years before Australia became a Federation.

Organisers the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW (RAS NSW) will be hoping this year’s Show continues the success of 2024, which despite downward discretionary spending managed to generate an 8% lift in average spend to $461 per family/group.

The highpoint of the NSW agricultural show calendar, over recent years, the RAS NSW has enhanced its digital strategy, replacing its former digital experience platform, which had no CRM in place. Since 2022, it has rebuilt its four websites on Optimizely’s Episerver CMS - the NFP’s home site, Sydney Royal Easter Show site, its Australasian animal registry site for pet microchip registrations, and its Sydney Showground event hosting site. It’s also brought in HubSpot as its CRM and marketing automation platform, shifting away from an older ExactTarget (now part of Salesforce) email marketing module.

Country Shows under Pressure
While the Royal Easter Show is thriving, other agricultural show are coming under pressure, with organisers burdened by administrative tasks.

In a recent ABC report, Cooma Show Patron Andrew Hain lamented the loss of volunteers, recalling when there was a waiting list to join the Show Society Committee.

Hain explained “there'd be 40 or 50 members (and) you'd have to wait two or three years to be able to get a position on the show.

"Now if you join up, I think it takes about 10 minutes because we need people badly."

A horse jumps over a jump at an agricultural show

Bombala Exhibition Society President Sophie Campbell advised that mounting paperwork means the volunteer-run events face an uncertain future.

Explaining that said volunteers spent much of their time writing forms and chasing documents, Campbell told the ABC “just the endless paperwork and the endless emails, the endless forms, the endless hoops that … volunteers are expected to hop through to put on an event.

"It's a common theme if you talk to our volunteers.”

Dr Ben Hillier, Director of Research, Policy and Advocacy at the Centre for Volunteering, sees that bureaucratic processes and paperwork are having an impact on regional events, noting “volunteer managers tell us that they're an imposition.

"Obviously there are some checks you need … (but) when you're already under the pump with trying to find people to volunteer, trying to organise your events and these different things, it can be a difficulty to get those processes filled."

Images: Rides at the 2025 Sydney Royal Easter Show (top), agricultural produce on display (middle) and sheep in the showring (below).

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