Ballarat City Council ended its sponsorship of the event on Tuesday afternoon after voted to delegate power to renegotiate the Ironman contract to chief executive Justine Linley on February 22.

The decision was made during the closed section of the meeting.

Ballarat mayor Samantha McIntosh said she backed the decision because councillors were elected to be financially responsible.

“Ironman has been an exceptionally successful event for Ballarat in the way it has been delivered, but there has been a question on the financial return,” she said.

“We were elected on the basis of being financially prudent.

“Events like Ballarat’s White Night have been an exceptional delivery and had a huge economic return to our city, but we have for instance a 1000 participants in Ironman, and not the degree of community participation we would have loved to have seen.

Council refused to reveal how much it spent on the competition each year.

The event drew up to 1000 participants to the city each year since it started in 2014.

Ironman managing director Dave Beeche said the event could not continue without the support of council.

“Host city support is a key component of attracting an international branded event and without this support we are in an unfortunate position where we cannot move forward with the Ballarat event into the future,” he said.

Visit Ballarat managed stakeholders and day to day marketing for the event.

The group’s chief executive Noel Dempsey said the event was a professionally run event that would need to run for a long to time secure a return for Ballarat.

“We reviewed the event and gave council feedback,” he said.

“We said it is a professionally run event, we have had it for three years, if you want to grow it then you have to run it for a long period time to get the yields.

“We have three years of event numbers for that.”

Mr Dempsey said numbers from three years of the event showed a slight decline in benefits.

“The numbers were flat over the three years,” he said.

“Being fair to council they are in a challenging period.

“With them we are looking at a long term events strategy and in the current environment, economically is it the right event?”

Cr McIntosh said the amount paid to the event each year was commercial-in-confidence and could not be disclosed.​