The Gold Coast Titans: NRL Rugby League and the Sports Community

The Gold Coast Titans, the NRL rugby league club that entered the competition in 2007 and that has been building the supporter base and the on-field competitive capability that sustains the club in the largest, most commercially intense sporting competition in Australia, represents the Gold Coast's most significant professional team sport investment and the primary vehicle for the city's engagement with the national sporting media and the NRL fan community that the competition generates. The club's home ground at Cbus Super Stadium in Robina provides the venue that the major game days, the non-rugby events, and the community events that the club hosts use for the Gold Coast community engagement that the NRL franchise provides.

The Gold Coast's surf lifesaving culture, represented by the 38 surf lifesaving clubs from Coolangatta in the south to Runaway Bay in the north that patrol the beaches and that the 20,000-plus surf lifesaving members contribute their volunteer time to, provides the community sporting culture that is more deeply embedded in the Gold Coast's identity than the professional sport franchises. The surf lifesaving carnival season, bringing the patrol clubs together in competition across the beach events, the ocean swim, and the traditional lifesaving disciplines, creates the community event calendar that the beach culture sustains independently of the professional sport investment.

The Gold Coast Marathon, the annual running event that attracts over 30,000 participants from across Australia and internationally to the Surfers Paradise seafront course, is one of the largest marathon events in Australia and the most significant mass participation sport event on the Gold Coast calendar. The marathon's combination of the international-standard course, the flat Surfers Paradise coastal setting, and the community support that the Gold Coast residents provide to the participants creates the event experience that sustains the Gold Coast Marathon's reputation as one of the most enjoyable marathon experiences in the country for the recreational runner.

The international surfing competition, including the Quiksilver and Roxy Pro events at Snapper Rocks that have been part of the World Surf League Championship Tour, brings the world's best surfers to the Gold Coast's most famous wave for the competition that the Superbank swell can produce at its best. The competition's global broadcast and the surfing media attention it generates reinforces the Gold Coast's identity as the heartland of Australian surfing and the destination that the surfing world's most competitive events are appropriate for.

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