Read about it in my newsletter today. A snippet:
The paper reported that the Carolina Hurricanes had an estimated economic impact per game of about $1 million. The average home game attendance was just shy of 18,000 fans (17,971).
Bear those figures in mind when reading about an economic impact study of Raleigh’s Rock’n’Roll Marathon. That study, provided by the marathon, estimated total visitors to Wake County of just over 18,000 (18,074, i.e., pretty much the same number of people as a hockey game). It estimated the economic impact of the marathon to be not $1 million, not $2 million or $4 million, but $8.13 million.
Granted, the marathon might attract a greater proportion of out-of-county visitors than a hockey game. But an eightfold higher economic impact is highly dubious.