I’ve made fun of articles in the past that breathlessly and credulously repeated claims that various big sporting events like a Super Bowl or a Final Four would yield untold millions in sales and hotel tax revenue for the state and the host city, despite the lack of objective evidence. With that in mind, I want to give credit to this Chron story about the upcoming Final Four in Houston, which takes a much more critical view of things.
Tens of thousands of fans are expected to swamp Houston later this week for the Final Four championship and unload their wallets in the city’s hotels, restaurants and bars.
Final Four organizers and researchers say Houston has a lot to gain from hosting the four-day college basketball championship, but a stubborn question emerges in every host that lands the event: Does it bring a financial windfall for the city?
A review of sales and hotel occupancy tax data from previous years Houston hosted the Final Four does not show a notable bump compared to years the city did not stage the event. When you add in extra costs the city takes on, like additional policing, infrastructure improvements and cleanup costs, the economic benefits get more muddy, researcher said.
“Sometimes we just list this really large number of economic impact, but we don’t talk about the investment that’s required,” said Jeremy Jordan, Temple University vice provost and former dean of the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management. “Planning and executing a large event for millions to watch requires large costs.”
Event organizers, boosters and city officials insist the broader benefits of the tournament extend far beyond the numbers. College basketball’s marquee event showcases the city to thousands of visitors and millions of fans tuning into the games across the country.
“Any time that we can put Houston in the spotlight is a great opportunity for us to be able to tell our story,” said Michael Heckman, CEO of Houston First, which operates several of the city’s convention, arts and entertainment venues.
The story then goes through a lot of different numbers to show that it’s hard to find an effect. My eyes glazed over after a few paragraphs, but it’s the process more than the specifics that really matter. My point in my earlier postings, which go all the way back to Super Bowl XXXVIII, is that it’s easy to make claims and difficult to produce evidence in support of those claims. Which the claimers usually avoided by not bothering, and which the stories often left unquestioned. That wasn’t the case here.
In the end, I do think there’s benefit to hosting large sporting events, even if the dollars and cents are hard to parse out. The benefits may be more intangible – and thus even more difficult to measure – and they accrue almost entirely to the limited set of people who care about the event in question. Having big attractions – in sports, music, culture, food, the arts, and so on – are benefits of living in a city, and the people that live there expect that over time there will be a number of such events that interest them. I don’t think it has to be more complicated than that.