The Economic Impact of Participant Sports Events: A Case Study for the Winter World Masters Games 2020 in Tyrol, Austria

Petri Lintumäki, Hannes Winner, Sabrina Scheiber, Anna Mederle and Martin Schnitzer
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Petri Lintumäki: Department of Sport Science, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Sabrina Scheiber: Department of Sport Science, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Anna Mederle: Department of Social Sciences and Economics, University of Salzburg, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
Martin Schnitzer: Department of Sport Science, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

Economies, 2020, vol. 8, issue 4, 1-23

Abstract: The Winter World Masters Games (WWMGs) are a large sports event for 30+-year-old athletes. As there are neither competitive qualification requirements for participants, nor entrance fees for spectators, the event can be considered as a participatory sports tourism event rather than a spectator event. In 2020, the WWMGs were staged in Innsbruck, Tyrol. In this study, we estimate the payoff of the event for the regional economy by assessing the impacts generated by participant spending and organizational expenditure. Furthermore, we discuss the peculiarities of the masters sports concept. Our empirical work is based on three distinct analyses: (1) economic impact analysis of participant spending, (2) cost-benefit analysis of organizational resource flows, and (3) discussion of impacts with experts in a focus group setting. Our results support the previous findings that masters sports events attract rather affluent and consumption-oriented participants. Indeed, the WWMGs were found to have a regional economic impact of €6.18 million and an estimated yield of €4.40 for each publicly subsidized euro. For an audience interested in the economic impact of events, this paper presents a novel method for handling non-normal expenditure distributions and adds to the understanding of how visitor segmentation can be utilized in an assessment of event impacts.

Keywords: economic impact study; sports events; tourism events (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E F I J O Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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