Financing of Sports Facilities

Sports Facilities impact on Economy

Impact of Sports Facilities on the Economy

There are different types of sports facilities provided by the government such as swimming pools, golf courses, bowling alleys, stadiums and so on, a relatively small subset of sports facilities have received the attention of economists. The previous studies focus entirely on stadiums and arenas that are home to professional baseball, basketball, football, hockey and soccer teams and the facilities put in place to host large events like summer and Winter Olympic Games. Economists do not focus on the economic impact of the neighborhood tennis court because it did not take hundreds of millions of public dollars to build and the people who use it do not claim that the surrounding neighborhood will reap tangible economic benefits, new income, new jobs as a result of tennis matches played on the court (Johnson et al, 2001).

Sporting facilities impact on the economy may appear unnoticeable. Unlike many other structures, most sporting facilities are constructed and managed to use public funds. These large public subsidies dedicated to the construction and function of sports facilities, combined with high visibility of and affection for sports stadiums in the public's minds and hearts has pushed the issue of the economic impact of sporting facilities to the forefront of public debate (Baade 1990).

In the past 20 years, almost every new sporting facility built with public funds has been accompanied by an economic impact study. These studies are designed to justify the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars on a new sporting facility and to convince opponents of these subsidies, as well as fence-sitters, that the proposed sporting facility will produce important tangible economic benefits for the community (Berument 2003).

Siegfried and Zimbalist (2000) provide a thorough summary of this literature. Economic impact studies share ...