What Goes into Hosting a Home Football Game or Sporting Event and its Impact on a Community

Abstract

Many people in communities of varying sizes and locations around the world have enjoyed attending sporting events or partaking in the peripheral industries sustained by and activities spawned by the success of the event. What follows is my attempt to see what impact these events have on communities.

Through the use of three sports business texts, three magazines - a Midwestern business magazine, an eastern business magazine and an economic journal; and interviews with a pair Tallahassee entrepreneurs, the head of a sports council and the current Super Bowl Host Committee Executive Director, I offer a sense of what it takes to successfully host a sporting event of any scale and how it impacts the local community.

A response common to most of my sources is that it takes planning and the buy in of the community. Whether you are in the food service industry and have to purchase twice or three times the amount of food to accommodate the increase in traffic or if you must coordinate activities at scores of venues in your community advanced planning and communication are pivotal to the success of the event and the peripheral enterprises constructed around it.

Outline

I) What I Know, Assume, or Imagine about Hosting a Sporting Event and its Economic Impact

II) The Search
a) Texts
1) The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on the Sports Business
2) The Sports Event Management and Marketing Playbook
3) Sport in the City: The role of sport in economic and social regeneration

b) Periodicals
1) International Association of Sports Economists
2) The Baltimore Business Journal
3) Crain's Detroit Business

c) Interviews
1) Ramone Marks and Jean-Pierre Knox - Culture Cuisine
2) Brian Hickey - Tallahassee Sports Council
3) Reid Sigmon – Tampa Bay Super Bowl Host Committee

III) What I Discovered
IV) Works Cited
V) Transcript of Interviews

What I Know, Assume, or Imagine about Hosting a Sporting Event
and its Economic Impact

As a lifetime participant, fan and attendee of sporting events, uncovering what it takes to host, execute, improve and measure the impact of an athletic event is intriguing. I have participated in a relay to help restore the Statue of Liberty, volunteered in hosting the Sunshine State Games, the AAU National Championships and the Super Bowl.  However, my contribution and participation in those events was limited. What I hope to uncover with this research is the scope of organization, planning and effort necessary to successfully host sporting events and note what requirements are common for hosting events of all scale and effect.

My experience with the events above showed me there is a need for early communication with leaders in the community, local businesses, and media outlets. Not to be overlooked is staff selection. From superficial observations as a volunteer, I noticed that promotional items (e.g. logo shirts, napkins, signage) were needed for staff, volunteers, guests, participants, and as giveaways.

I assume that there are regular meetings between the project managers and their staff members; less frequent meetings between staff members and volunteers; intermittent progress reports from event executives to the boards overlooking their activities.

I imagine the pace of activity related to preparations continues to increase until the day the event commences just as the space between contractions increases until the final push is given for delivery.

"The Search"
My search for resource material started at FAMU's Coleman Library. The three most useful texts I found were The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on the Sports Business by Andrew Zimbalist, The Sports Event Management and Marketing Playbook by Frank Supovitz, and Sport in the City: The role of sport in economic and social regeneration by Chris Gratton and Ian P. Henry.

Part of what I found in my search is that the quest to host the next mega-sporting event isn't always beneficial long term. Information on the crème de la crème of multi-sport events – the Olympics – was abundant. Zimbalist's text summarized it best in saying that few hosts of the Summer Games make a profit. The last significant one to do so was Los Angeles in 1984. Los Angeles required little building of new facilities or infrastructure in order to host the games. The L.A. Organizing committee even produced a surplus of $335 million.  For Barcelona's efforts in 1992, the organizing committee broke even but the public gained a debt of $6.2 billion. Montreal is still attempting to pay off its $2.7 billion debt from hosting the 1976 games.  For the 1996 games, Atlanta's organizing committee broke even, but econometric results showed an insignificant impact to air traffic, retail sales and hotel occupancy. The average daily rate for hotel rooms increased, but those profits went to the headquarters of the chain hotels which in many cases weren't located in Atlanta. (Zimbalist, 168)

A nearly ubiquitous concern for many host cities is the long-term use of the stadiums that are constructed for the games. The two Olympic soccer stadiums in Athens remain unused most of the year as no professional team has shown interest in using them as the community continues to spend money to sustain them. When New York City failed to win the 2012 games there arose a few sighs of relief by those who questioned the usefulness of committing acreage to an athletic facility in a city that has a major housing shortage (Zimbalist, 169).

Supovitz's The Sports Event Management and Marketing Playbook attempts to keep the keys of sports event success simple with a wedge play in which the event organizer leads the event management team (staff, volunteers and suppliers) and event stakeholders (event facilities, sponsors, broadcasters and media, local government, business community) in a formation against any obstacles to the success of the event (Supovitz, 10).

Gratton and Henry's Sport in the City: The role of sport in economic and social regeneration includes an assessment of the social benefits of sports which suggests that sporting events help sustain the bonds of association between neighboring and distant communities as well as within communities. Within this text, Jonathan Long and Ian Sanderson spearhead the effort to find proof for the question whether there are social benefits to sports. They find that the most commonly reported community benefits include: empowerment of disadvantaged groups, confidence building, cohesion, improving the capacity of the community to take initiatives, reduction of crime, delinquency and vandalism (Gratton and Henry, 187).

PERIODICALS
My quest for periodicals took me to FSU's Strozier Library. There I found Down, Set, Hike: The Economic Impact of College Football on Local Economies by Robert Baade et al in the International Association of Sports Economists; 4 tips for hosting a successful sporting event in The Baltimore Business Journal. Days later when I continued my search for periodicals at Coleman I found an article that praised the value of college football games above the Super Bowl in Crain's Detroit Business magazine.

In the February 2007 edition of the International Association of Sports Economists Robert Baade concludes that increasing the number of home games in 64 major college football communities did not have a positive economic impact on a community. This balanced analysis weighed assessments taken prior (ex ante) to games as well as those taken after (ex post) and confirmed his hypothesis by analyzing the results of several ex post analyses in developing his conclusion (Baade et al, 12)

The October 29, 2007, issue of Crain's Detroit Business shared the results of a study by Anderson Economic Group which found that the economic impact of the 15 home games of University of Michigan and Michigan State University - $177 million - was three times that of Super Bowl XL held at Detroit's Ford Field - $56 million. According to the study, $88.7 million of the $177 million offered direct impacts to the areas in ticket sales, concessions, food and drinks before and after the games, and parking. In and of themselves – without comparing them to other activities - these figures are sizeable and benefit the community.

During my search the most practical advice that I found for developing a local event came from the July 7, 2006, issue of the Baltimore Business Journal article “4 tips for hosting a successful sporting event.” In the article, Julekha Dash presents four main points of advice: prepare for logistical challenges, gather volunteers and train them well, develop creative ways for gaining publicity and innovative methods for wooing and retaining sponsors. The article also includes a point that some may overlook – that a permit from the police department is needed to host a sporting event. Additional advice includes that competition for sponsors will be fierce as the number of athletic events has grown tremendously and in many communities the events pursue the same sponsorship dollars. As a result, making your opportunity stick out is a must.

INTERVIEWS
Input from texts and periodicals offered only a portion of what I discovered. Interviews with the leaders of three companies of differing scope offered a variety of input. Having failed to get the input of two members of FAMU's Athletic Department - Clifton Huff, Special Assistant to the Athletic Director, and Alvin Hollins, Jr., Assistant Athletic Director for Media Relations – I gained the input of two entrepreneurs greatly affected by FAMU home games. Ramone Marks and Jean-Pierre Knox, proprietors of the three-year old Culture Cuisine, say that home games offer two to three times the business they receive on a Saturday without a special event. From casual surveying of their customers at their Lincoln and Adams Street location they've found that three of every four patrons are out-of-town visitors to the area who came particularly because of the game. Many of these visitors are repeat customers of the eclectic cuisine which includes Caribbean and Southern favorites.

My next resource on the impact and orchestration of a local sporting event was Brian Hickey, Executive Director of the Tallahassee Sports Council (TSC). Hickey brought to my attention that local athletes also benefit from the sporting events held in the area. In many cases local teams have the opportunity to participate. The exceptions are often final-level events such as high school state final fours or single-game state championship events. Otherwise, the opportunity to participate or to observe high level performances as volunteers also enrich the Tallahassee community. Financial enrichment of the community also occurs as event attendees and participants purchase items at area stores and occupy hotel rooms generating bed tax which enables the TSC to bid for the opportunity to host additional events. Hosting such an event raises Tallahassee's position in the mind of executives considering venues and host communities for other sizeable events.

Hickey enlightened me on the breadth of community involvement that went into the area's hosting the 2004 Florida Sunshine State Games (SSG), an Olympic-style event involving 24 sports. This undertaking included the use of 34 venues, each of the major universities, Leon County Schools, Tallahassee Parks and Recreation, the Northwest Florida Water Management District, Coast Guard, numerous volunteers, Leon County Sheriff's Department, and the Florida Game and Fish Commission. As he prepares to bid to host the SSG again in 2012 he knows that planning will have to begin two years prior to the event.

The input of my first two interviews was echoed by Reid Sigmon, Executive Director of Tampa Bay Super Bowl Host Committee. Sigmon sees the impact of America's most watched annual sporting event – the Super Bowl – as "an immeasurable marketing opportunity" for the Tampa Bay area. A record six thousand volunteers have registered to help welcome the expected 100,000 visitors who will descend on the region for the festivities surrounding the February 1, 2009, event. With the volunteers being ambassadors for the region there is hope for many return visits. Sigmon believes the estimated economic impact of the Super Bowl on the area will be $350 million. The Host Committee is helping the National Football League's Emerging Business program connect local minority and women-owned businesses with Super Bowl-related business opportunities. Sigmon also hopes to use the excitement surrounding the Super Bowl to encourage students in their studies with the Super Learning in a Super City program. The latter two efforts exemplify a concerted effort to benefit the host community of a sporting event that can be applauded.


What I Discovered
Although studies offer differing perspectives on the economic influence of sporting events on their communities, the sense of community engendered by the event, the joint effort in hosting such efforts, community networking, and peripheral business generated from such activity is a benefit to the communities and strengthens the bonds of the university with the community, its alumni, students and staff. It's hard to miss the purchases of party supplies, sales conducted hot dog and beverage vendors.

The largest obstacle that I faced was the lack of response from FAMU officials. However, the input of a local business was useful and made for a good substitute. It was good to see that similar studies had been done, but none that examined a school of FAMU's size nor other schools which were not members of a Bowl Championship Series conference.

This topic is significant to communities of all scales. The priorities weighed by professional teams and their communities as they consider building new stadiums differ from smaller communities and universities as they consider their facilities. One is more for profit and is better insulated from the impact of economic changes by the size of its population.

Works Cited
Baade, Robert A. “Down, Set, Hike: The Economic Impact of College Football Games on Local Economies.” International Association of Sports Economists Working Paper Series, Paper No. 07-01. February 2007.

“College Football Worth More than Super Bowl.” Crain's Business Journal. 29 October 2007.

Dash, Julekha. “4 Tips for Hosting a Successful Sporting Event.” Baltimore Business Journal 10 July 2006.

Gratton, Chris and Ian P. Henry. Sport in the City: The role of sport in economic and social regeneration. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.

Hickey, Brian (Exec. Director Tallahassee Sports Council). E-mail interview. 4-6 October 2008.

Knox, Jean-Pierre and Ramone Marks (restaurateurs). Live in-person interview.
7 October 2008.

Sigmon, Reid (Exec. Director Tampa Bay Super Bowl Host Committee). E-mail interview. 4-6 October 2008.

Supovitz, Frank. The Sports Event Management and Marketing Playbook. New Jersey: Wiley, 2005.

Zimbalist, Andrew. The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on the Sports Business. Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2006.

Interviews

Interview 1
Contacts:  Ramone Marks (RM) and Jean-Pierre Knox (JPK)
Organization: Culture Cuisine
How old is your business?
JPK: Three years old

How does a FAMU home game influence your business?
RM: It increases it doubles and nearly triples it. With noticeable increases Friday and Sunday. The largest crowd is game day.

How many out of town customers do you have on a game weekend?
RM: From my conversations with the customers three of every four are out-of-town visitors.

Interview II
Contact: Brian Hickey
Organization: Tallahassee Sports Council
How do you measure the success of a city-wide event like the Southern Sports Festival or Sunshine State Games? Both the Southeast Sports Festival (SESF) and Florida's Sunshine State Games (SSG) are events that the Tallahassee Sports Council bids to host. These events bring numerous out of town visitors to our community to compete in their sports. The great thing about these events is they allow local athletes to participate, that way we are not using local public facilities and not eliminating the public. We have numerous ways to measure the success of an event, first is quantity of room nights this regenerates the bed tax in which we are able to go out and bid on another event completing the cycle. Second is quantity of visitors providing and economic impact. Third is exposure for the city and this happens in several ways through media, word of mouth in the governing bodies world that Tallahassee is a wonderful place to host an event, local exposure to what we do for the local economy.

 
What opportunities are there for the community to be involved in events of this scale? As well as those of smaller scale. Every event needs volunteers, this is the greatest asset to hosting events other than the facility (you must have both).  The interested parties can contact me and we can put them in touch with organizations that are in need of volunteers. Volunteering is the best way for students to add depth to their resume.
 

Organizationally, what might the public not know is involved in preparing for such an event (e.g. facility coordination, volunteers, marketing, etc.)? For an events the size of SESF and SSG, minimum 1 1/2 years to 2 years of planning. We are currently looking at bidding on 2012 for Florida's Sunshine State Games. That would be four years from now. It costs a great deal of money to put these events on correctly, the time invested. One of the most difficult things to coordinate are the facilities, that is one reason you have to go so far in the future due to calendars. In 2004 we ran approximately 34 venues, with 24 sports. Of those 34 venues we were working with different organizations, FAMU, FSU Athletics, TCC, Leon County Schools, Tallahassee/Leon County Civic Center, Tallahassee Parks and Rec., Leon County Parks and Rec., and NW FL Water Management District, County Sherrif, City Police, FSU Police, FSU Campus Recreation, Coast Guard, FL Game and Fish. This takes a great deal of time to sit down and meet with all of these organizations, get to the right person, and make sure they buy into what our goals are.

 
Would you share the timeline involved in preparing for a city-wide event? And how it might differ from a smaller scale event? As you see with the previous question you must take advantage with the months early in the planning process, because the marketing and volunteer gathering come in the months just prior to the event. The Operations and logistics planning continues through out the event.


Given the size of the task what have you found valuable in distributing the load as you prepare to host such far-reaching events? Working with peoples strengths (if you have the time to know what they are). Also you must have the top of the organization you are working with buy in before you will get any work done. Go strait to the top and have the organization buy in publicly so they are vested into the success.

Interview III
Contact: Reid Sigmon
Organization: Tampa Bay Super Bowl Host Committee

What principle must the volunteers keep in mind as they contribute to hosting this event?

Volunteers will be stationed across Tampa Bay at airports and hotels, offering visitors a warm welcome and information during game week. We want our volunteers to remember that they are serving as key ambassadors for the Tampa Bay region. Their will give more than 100,000 visitors their first impressions of our community. First impressions can go along way.

Are there any disadvantages to having three to four years to prepare for the event?

You can never begin Super Bowl preparations too early. The community was awarded Super Bowl XLIII by NFL owners in May 2005. Since that time, the community has been counting down to February 1, 2009. Successful Super Bowl communities use the preparation time to finalize and execute plans to make sure the event is a memorable experience for both the NFL and its fans.

For those who may have visited Tampa Bay for the last Super Bowl held in the area, what changes can they expect to find?

Since hosting Super Bowl XXXV in 2001, visitors will find a city that continues to grow and thrive. Tampa’s downtown corridor has expanded significantly with the opening of a new waterfront entertainment hub, Channelside Bay Plaza. The Embassy Suites Tampa Downtown opened in 2006 and offers a direct connection to the Tampa Convention Center. The TECO Line Streetcar System made its debut in 2002 and connects visitors to attractions throughout downtown Tampa and historic Ybor City.

How has the community benefited from your outreach thus far and what may be on the horizon?
The Super Bowl offers the host community an estimated $350 million in economic impact and an immeasurable marketing opportunity. Additionally, the Super Bowl brings with it some really unique community outreach programs from which the Tampa Bay community stands to benefit.

The NFL’s Emerging Business program will help build Tampa Bay’s economic base by connecting local minority- and women-owned businesses with Super Bowl-related business opportunities.

Super Learning in a Super City is another community outreach program of the Host Committee’s.
The free, voluntary program incorporates the Super Bowl into subjects like history, geography, mathematics, social studies, language arts and science. Through unique lesson plans that have been carefully aligned with Florida state standards, Super Learning uses the Super Bowl as a platform to teach literacy, environmental awareness and community service in kindergarten through 12th grade. It is a great opportunity to bring the excitement of Super Bowl XLIII into the lives of students across Tampa Bay. It’s a way to promote education while giving kids an opportunity to celebrate and learn about their community.

From your participation in other Super Bowls, what addition(s) to this one excites you the most?

The Super Bowl continues to expand each year. The school-based outreach programs as well as the NFL’s Environmental Program will provide lasting impact. The media coverage and opportunities to showcase the Tampa Bay area are exciting. There is also excitement surrounding the NFL’s selection of Bruce Springsteen for the Halftime Show.