A MAJOR central Victorian event is waiting until the last possible minute to decide whether it can run its October event.
The Elmore Field Days will decide in early July whether its annual agricultural event will go ahead.
The three-day field days attract thousands of people each year.
It comes after a "huge" financial hit to the organisation, which was forced to cancel near-weekly events at its grounds.
But organisers said the event was in a strong enough financial position to survive, even if it does not run in 2020.
Elmore Field Days Committee president Derek Shotton said the group decided mid-July was the latest it could make its choice, based on a time-frame of crucial decisions.
He said the biggest risk to the event was if it committed to run - costing a massive amount of money - then was forced to cancel at the last minute.
Mr Shotton said cancellation would "make it tight" financially for the field days, but not "send us to the wall".
"We would have loved to make a decision months ago," he said.
"But we just felt the fairest thing to our exhibitors and our patrons is to not run into a decision half cocked, and to try and leave it as late as we possibly can, to make sure we've got the most accurate information possible."
Mr Shotton said about two thirds of exhibitors would normally have booked by this time of year.
He said about half the event's revenue each year came from exhibitors, half from visitors.
"We can't afford to lose a crowd or exhibitors before it impacts on our financial viability," he said.
"We had a massive downturn in revenue straight away, and we don't know when it'll open up again," he said.
"It's affected us hugely. We're not just the field days, we run events all year round. We've taken a pretty big hit.
"We would have horse events most weekends of the year ... We've lost a large proportion of those. We haven't had a horse event here since the outbreak."
Mr Shotton said the committee was waiting on the next set of restriction easing guidelines before deciding whether to lease its grounds for events again.
He said most events hired the facilities from the field days, leaving it liable if the third party failed to follow coronavirus safety restrictions.
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