Big Men on Campus: Estimating the Economic Impact of College Sports on Local Economies

Abstract

College football and men’s basketball are the largest revenue generators in college athletics. Studies funded by athletic boosters tout the economic benefits of a college athletic program as an incentive for host cities to construct new stadiums or arenas at considerable public expense. Our analysis of the economic impact of home football and men’s basketball games on Tallahassee (home of Florida State University) and Gainesville (home of the University of Florida) between 1980 to early-2007 fails to support these claims. Men’s basketball games at these universities have no statistically significant impact on taxable sales, while football yields a modest gain of $2 to$3 million per home game. While this positive finding is one of the first in the academic literature of the impact of sports, these gains pale in comparison to the figures in many of the studies funded by athletic boosters.sports, basketball, football, college sports, impact analysis, mega-event