Wise Impact

A recent item posted on Fast Company's web site sites research by Patrick James Rishe at Webster University that turns the conventional wisdom about the economic impact of major sporting events on its head.  Rishe's data show that when one looks closely at exactly how many dollars are both new to and then stay in the market after the event, the actual economic impact is less than a third of what the sports leagues claim.  Further, the impact is brief; while universities themselves see an up-tick in freshman applications in the year immediately after a NCAA Final Four appearance, few cities can show much residual effect from having hosted the event itself.
A better way for communities to spend development money might be to bolster existing (or attract new) public and private universities.  A report from the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC) shows that public research universities pump hundreds of millions of dollars into a community year after year.  Conventional wisdom might overlook a university's quiet impact to instead focus on the noisy media coverage attending a sports event.  And, as in so many other instances, the conventional wisdom would be wrong.