Jets fan Richard Weiss says the Whiteout street parties brought a lot of pride to Winnipeg.

"Finally something to be happy about living in Winnipeg something to cheer about," said Weiss.

Free to get into the events, but not free to put on. The price tag for the parties is in: $2.2 million.

"We threw nine street parties the size and scale that Winnipeg has never seen before," said Dayna Spiring, CEO of Economic Development Winnipeg.

True North Sports and Entertainment will cover half, $1.1 million dollars. Most of that is for production costs but $153,000 is earmarked for transit and police.

The city is on the hook for $962,000 with Economic Development Winnipeg spending $120,000.

The bulk of the city's costs are police and transit related.

"They're each being asked to look within their own departmental budgets to see how they may be able to best handle this," said City Chief Corporate Services Officer Michael Jack.

True North says it agreed to pay half, unlike other cities like Nashville where taxpayers foot most of the bill.

"True north was not interested in putting on something that took on 100 percent of the expenses on the premise that it was a free admission event,” said True North Senior VP Kevin Donnelly.

Mayor Brian Bowman thanked True North for pitching in.

"Their funding is significant, let’s not lose sight of that," said Bowman.

Not everyone is thankful. Jets fan Amanda Cook attended four street parties and she said True North should pay more.

"It's not really fair to the taxpayers I mean it's nice that we can have a street party and all but..."said Cook.

Richard Weiss sees it differently; he said this was a Winnipeg party, not a True North event.

"They didn't even have to pay for any of it good on them for anteing in this was a city thing," said Weiss.

Expenses and highlights according to Economic Development Winnipeg:

  • 5 large mobile screens, the largest one being 23 feet tall and 39 feet long
  • 2 kilometres of fibre optic cable run each event
  • 7,090 feet of fencing – the largest single event requirement in the supplier’s history  
  • 165 portable toilets
  • 8 hours of setup and 3-4 hours of teardown each event day, with approximately 100 staff working during each phase
  • 15 food vendors serving a variety of local delicacies and comfort foods
  • More than 26,500 kg of food collected for Winnipeg Harvest

After revenues from street vendors, True North says its net costs are around $600,000.