Selling the Big Game: Estimating the Economic Impact of Mega-Events through Taxable Sales

Robert Baade (), Robert Baumann () and Victor Matheson
Additional contact information
Robert Baade: Department of Economics and Business, Lake Forest College

No 610, Working Papers from International Association of Sports Economists, North American Association of Sports Economists

Abstract: Professional sports leagues, franchises, and civic boosters, have used the promise of an all star game or league championship as an incentive for host cities to construct new stadiums or arenas at considerable public expense. Past league-sponsored studies have estimated that Super Bowls, All-Star games and other sports mega-events increase economic activity by hundreds of millions of dollars in host cities. Our analysis fails to support these claims. Our detailed regression analysis of taxable sales in Florida over the period 1980 to 2004 reveals that on, average, mega-events ranging from the World Cup to the World Series have been associated with reductions in taxable sales in host regions of $5 to $10 million per month. Likewise, strikes in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, and the National Basketball League, each of which has resulted in the cancellation of large parts of entire seasons, appear to have also had no demonstrable negative effect on taxable sales in host cities.

Keywords: impact analysis; sports; mega-event; championship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L83 R53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2006-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-spo, nep-tur and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/BaadeBaumannMatheson_TaxableSales.pdf WEA 2005 paper (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/BaadeBaumannMatheson_TaxableSales.pdf [302 Found]--> https://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/BaadeBaumannMatheson_TaxableSales.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Selling the Big Game: Estimating the Economic Impact of Mega-Events through Taxable Sales (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spe:wpaper:0610

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from International Association of Sports Economists Contact information at EDIRC., North American Association of Sports Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Victor Matheson ().