Super Bowl’s economic impact hard to score

Before Super Bowl LI kicks off in Houston, analysis of the game’s economic impact on the city is already underway. Olin’s director of the Business of Sports program, Patrick Rishe, weighs in on the financial forecasts and concludes it’s best to wait until the game is over to measure revenue reaped by the local community. Here’s an excerpt from report in the Houston Chronicle:

Last year, right before Super Bowl L (that’s 50 for non-Latin speakers) in the San Francisco Bay area, Rockport guesstimated — without doing a full analysis — that the event would bring in $350 million for local communities. The official post-game analysis, done by a firm called Sportsimpacts, found the actual amount was closer to $240 million.

That study also incorporated both indirect and induced spending, and accounted for out-of-town spending and displaced tourism. But author Patrick Rishe — the director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis — cautions against trying to draw parallels between different reports, since every firm has its own assumptions and methodologies and set of expectations from the host committee.

“Comparing economic impact studies across Super Bowls is risky business,” Rishe says, “and ultimately, a futile one.”