Sport Event Economic Impact Analysis

Sport event economic impact analysis estimates the economic activity a region gains from hosting an event by tracing the new spending that visitors inject and propagating it through the local economy with input-output multipliers. John Crompton's foundational 1995 paper in the Journal of Sport Management is as much a warning as a method: it catalogued eleven recurring sources of misapplication — counting local residents' spending, using sales rather than income multipliers, ignoring time-switchers and casuals, omitting costs and opportunity costs — that systematically inflate headline numbers. His 2006 follow-up was blunter still, framing many impact studies as instruments for political shenanigans designed to justify subsidies rather than to find economic truth. Done correctly, the method isolates genuinely new, event-attributable spending by non-locals, applies an appropriate income multiplier, and nets out the public costs and displacement that boosters routinely ignore.