The Impact of the UEFA Women’s EURO on Hotel Overnight Stays: Evidence From a Causal Analysis

Hannes Wallimann and Anna Mehr

Journal of Sports Economics, 2026, vol. 27, issue 4, 478-497

Abstract: The impact evaluation of female sports events remains an important yet neglected area of research. To fill this gap, this paper provides a timely assessment of the 2025 UEFA Women’s European Championship (WEURO) in Switzerland—the largest women-specific sports event in Europe with more than 657,000 spectators. Using city-level data on hotel overnight stays, we apply the Synthetic Difference-in-Differences approach of Arkhangelsky et al.(2021) to compare WEURO host cities with non-host destinations. In summary, our results do not support strong claims of large tourism impacts but rather point to a small positive effect. Sensitivity analyses also suggest positive effects. However, confidence intervals permit firm conclusions only for the main venues, where hotel overnight stays increased by 1.6% attributable to the WEURO. Overall, our findings indicate positive but modest tourism impacts of the WEURO and outline a framework for further policy evaluation of sports events.

Keywords: sports events; policy evaluation; tourism impacts; synthetic Difference-in-Differences method; hotel overnight stays (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jospec:v:27:y:2026:i:4:p:478-497

DOI: 10.1177/15270025261434474

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