Location, Location, Location: Estimating Impacts of Sports Venues and Other Attractions

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach for analyzing spatially differentiated impacts of a variety of entertainment attractions, including professional sports venues, convention centers, destination retail, and mega-events. Public finding is often based on the potential for such projects to stimulate economic growth. Although, the literature fails to uncover evidence of growth benefits, the analysis is typically of net aggregate benefits at the MSA level where as large attractions are likely to have differential impacts across geographic locations as well as industry types. This paper extends previous research by exploiting a unique micro dataset; the National Establishment Times series (NETs). This allows for spatial panel analysis with a focus on industries most likely to be impacted by the attraction. I find evidence of spatially differentiated impacts associated with the relocation of the National Basketball Association franchise from Seattle (SuperSonics) to Oklahoma City (Thunder). The franchise relocation attracted retail sales to the downtown area of OKC but may have decreased sales outside of downtown.