The Ernst & Young report, released on Sunday, found the Newcastle 500 had delivered an average return of $36.2 million in economic output. The council said that result showed for every $1 it invested, based on its $1.6 million annual event budget - which includes a licence fee and services provided to Supercars - $22.60 has been returned to the local economy.

Responding to the report's release, the Newcastle East Residents' Group (NERG) said on Monday that it had repeatedly called for a Newcastle 500 cost-benefit analysis, but the Ernst & Young report "fails to provide either costs or believable benefits".

Ernst & Young warns in the report that its conclusions were "based, in part, on the assumptions stated in the information provided by the client" and other relevant stakeholders, including Supercars Australia.

The NERG said the analysis relied on attendance figures provided by Supercars, which it said had to be taken with caution given a previous breakdown of the 2017 event.

The 2017 three-day attendance of 192,400 people included, according to figures obtained by NERG under freedom-of-information laws, tens of thousands of tickets for residents, businesses, Supercars staff, race team members and others. Ticketek sales, excluding 8597 corporate tickets, totalled 100,066 across three days. The overall attendance was also at odds with phone data used in a previous council-funded race assessment.

While the Ernst & Young analysis took a different approach, excluding attendees from the Newcastle local government area, the NERG questioned the raw numbers.

"Supercars does not provide an actual count of attendees. Rather they use the number of 'tickets issued' - sold or given free to accredited people," a NERG spokesperson said. "An attendance GIPA received by NERG shows that Supercars claimed the numbers of interstate tickets distributed in 2018 increased from 9382 in 2017 to 12,627 in 2018. However, about half of these were free tickets and came from unbelievable increases in teams and staff from interstate. These jumped from 624 in 2017 to over 2000 in 2018."

The council also released a separate report which detailed the results of a survey that assessed residents and businesses' views on major events. The Newcastle 500 delivered the best "positive impact" compared to other events, according to the businesses surveyed, but among residents it came in at eighth in terms of their "interest".

Support for Supercars was greatest in ward four, Newcastle's western suburbs, but waned closer to the track.

Supercars returns to Newcastle on March 4-6 for what is the final event under the current contract.

A five-year extension is in Supercars' favour but City of Newcastle CEO Jeremy Bath said recently if the newly elected council opposed the event, it was unlikely to continue.

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