The Economic Impact of Sports Facilities, Franchises, and Events

This edited volume discusses the economic impact of sports facilities, franchises, and events on local economies. Written in honor of Robert Baade upon his retirement, the book provides a state-of-the-art of current research on the economic impact of sports, and recognizes the seminal contributions that Dr. Baade has made to this topic.

The analysis of the economic impact of spectator sports is a vital public policy topic as $75 billion has been spent on stadium construction since 1990 in the US alone, with nearly $35 billion of this coming from taxpayer subsidies. True public cost of sports franchises is much higher than this as this figure excludes facilities outside the Big 5 domestic leagues (like NASCAR track, NCAA facilities, minor league baseball, and the Canadian Football Leagues), public subsidies for major events like the Super Bowl or Olympic Games, and excludes sports subsidies outside of direct stadium construction subsidies.

Including contributions from many of the most notable researchers studying the economic impact of sports, topics include impacts of stadiums and franchises on local economies, labor markets, and tax collections, the effect of sports franchises on property values, and changes in the public and academic discourse on sports subsidies over time. This volume will be of interest to researchers and students of sports economics, management, public policy, and public finance.

Auteur

Victor A. Matheson is a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA (US) specializing in the economic impact of sports. He has been active in the field for nearly 25 years having published over 100 refereed journal articles or book chapters. He has co-authored The Economics of Sports, 7th edition (Routledge) and The Economics of the Super Bowl (Palgrave Macmillan) as well as co-edited Teaching Sports Economics and Using Sports to Teach Economics (Edward Elgar.) He is the past president of the North American Association of Sports Economics and is on the editorial boards of the Eastern Economic Journal, the International Journal of Sport Finance, and the Journal of Sports Economics. Robert W. Baumann is professor in the Department of Economics and Accounting at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA (US). He specializes in econometrics and labor economics and has published widely on the economic impacts of sporting events and sports tourism. He is also an active forensic economist and served as the vice president of the National Association of Forensic Economics.