St. John’s Sports and Entertainment is still recovering from the downtime of the pandemic, and that has resulted in a nearly $1 million increase to their operating budget.

In the recent St. John’s city budget over $6 million was allocated for SJSE, a $961,000 increase from the previous year.

Finance lead Ron Ellsworth says the reasoning for the increase is a revenue issue and not an expense issue. He says coming out of COVID the number of events are down and thus so is the amount of money being brought in.

Ellsworth explains that the increase is needed this year, as opposed to other pandemic years, because Mary Browns Centre and the Convention Centre are open for events.

Being open is more expensive than being closed, says Ellsworth. He says they have staff brought back and they are making investments in the facilities, but the revenue from events has not fully come back yet.