PM: Georgia to be gathering place for international sport, cultural events

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili on Friday told the Parliament “important” cultural and sport events took place in the country last year and the trend would continue this year as well to make Georgia a “gathering place for international level sport and cultural events”.

Garibashvili said this year Georgia would host the Europalia arts festival, a biennial multidisciplinary event highlighting artistic and cultural facets of select countries in its editions. He also mentioned the Starring Georgia local campaign, a series of shows promoting the country's tourism potential and showcasing it on the map of entertainment events around the world.  

Speaking about the achievements in sport Garibashvili singled out the 2023 Freestyle Ski and Snowboard World Championships that was hosted in the ski resort of Bakuriani.

We spent about ₾300 million ($115.17mln) to completely upgrade infrastructure, including artificial snowmaking system, six ski tracks [in Bakuriani]. About 700 athletes from 42 countries participated [in the competition]. It is very good that the International Ski Federation marked Georgia as permanent hosts in its competition calendar”, said Garibashvili. 

Garibashvili said Georgia was currently hosting the UEFA Under-21 European Championship and congratulated “our talented, proud athletes on great victories and wished for another victory on Saturday”.

We have completely renovated the stadiums named after Mikheil Meskhi in Tbilisi, as well as Dinamo stadium in Kutaisi, ₾100 million ($38.39mln) was spent. I think that this will be a result-oriented, long-term investment”, he said.

Garibashvili also talked about Starring Georgia campaign and said that ₾70 million ($26.87mln) was allocated for the two-year campaign, of which ₾28 million ($10.75mln) was planned to be spent this year. 

“We are expecting up to 100,000 guests. The tickets were sold at a record speed. As of today, ₾17 million ($6.53mln) has been received in the form of income, ₾4.5 million ($1.73mln) is the income received from sponsorship, and by the end of the year we expect an income of ₾150 million ($57.59mln)”, Garibashvili said.