On the economic impact of international sport events: microevidence from survey data at the EURO 2008

Abstract

Using firm-level data for up to 707 Swiss hotels and restaurants we evaluate the economic impact of the EURO 2008 soccer championship. Although aggregated macro data reveal no economic impact, we report an overall negative effect based on the surveyed companies.Notably the reported effects of the individual firms are very heterogeneous. For instance, hotels in cities benefitted from the tournament as they were able to raise prices and thereby increase profits. Looking at the long-run impact only a small fraction of companies do believe in a positive effect. Interestingly, this outlook does not depend on earnings, but on the guest structure.JEL classification: L83, O18, R11

Do Hotels Benefit from Hosting IIHF World Championships?

“…Th e simultaneous increase in occupancy and selling rates was identifi ed in the leisure-focused destination of Bratislava, where the championship was planned for the low season (as Bratislava is missing high-value business groups and MICE segments). When focusing on the long-term eff ects of these tournaments, the authors confi rm fi ndings of previously mentioned studies of Vierhaus (2019), Barreda et al (2017), andLamla et al (2014) that there is no evidence of this eff ect. On the other hand, the data analysis of the Prague market performance during the fi nal stage showed a signifi cant impact like the studies by Dermody et al (2003) and Rishe (2014).…”

“…Within sport event tourism, considerable attention is being paid to Olympic Games (Mahtani et al, 2013;Weed et al, 2015;Kasimati, 2003), and major events of FIFA (Nicolau, 2012;Peeters et al, 2014), or UEFA (Pavlov, 2016;Lamla et al, 2014).…”

“…Similar to the FIFA World Cup, UEFA EUROs were examined in a few studies to identify the eff ect of slightly smaller sports events. Lamla et al (2014) examined EURO 2008 held in Switzerland through a survey of entrepreneurs in tourism. Th e study focused on the whole destination of Switzerland, where nearly half of the respondents stated no eff ect of hosting EURO 2008.…”

“…Th e identifi ed positive eff ect was located mainly in hosting cities hotels (2.5% growth in sales volume compared to the previous year). Lamla et al (2014), Pavlov (2016) shows a stunning 200% increase in daily rates of hotels during hosting EURO 2012 in Poland while maintaining the occupancy of 75%. Th e conducted study focused not only on the hotel performance but as well on the performance of other entrepreneurs, where 87% of them took no action to increase their revenue during the tournament.…”

How do perceptions of non-mega sport events impact quality of life and support for the event among local residents?

“…All sport events have some impacts on the economic and social development in the host country or city (Chalip 2004;Scheu and Preuss 2018;Wicker, Hallmann, and Zhang 2012;Zhou and Ap 2009). The impact of sport events is complex and previous studies have extensively explored this issue, which mainly focus on the economic (Lamla, Straub, and Girsberger 2014;Roche, Spake, and Joseph 2013), socio-cultural (Burnett 2008;Kim et al 2015), and environmental impacts (Collins, Jones, and Munday 2009;Konstantaki and Wickens 2010). Much of the existing literature indicates that the impacts of sport events generally include both positive and negative perspectives, with some even suggesting that mega-sport events have more negative effects than positive effects on the host city (Scheu and Preuss 2018).…”