Social and Economic Impact Assessment of Relevant Sporting Events in Local Communities: the Case of the ITF Female Tennis Championship held in Seville in 2006

Abstract

Nowadays, sports go beyond their merely practice reaching social, economic and even policy aspects of everyday life. Hosting great sporting events has become into a rather prolific source of direct and induced benefits for the cities where they take place. Hence, public and economic institutions struggle to host these kinds of events along their geographical influence areas. However, most impact assessments often exaggerate local benefits since they are conducted by vested interest agents. Then, this paper provides a simpleto- use methodology to assess the social and economic impacts of hosting great sporting events at local level. Transparency and impartiality are two main advantages of the followed procedure in the sense that it has been carried out by a research group linked to the University and with no vested interest at all. The empirical part has been developed for the ITF Female Tennis Championship of the WTA Circuit held in Seville in October, 2006.JRC.J.2-Competitiveness and Sustainabilit