The B.C. Lions are set to fuel the local economy by gaining a berth in the 2011 Grey Cup against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Sunday.
BC Place Stadium is hosting the championship for the eighth time since 1983, when the Lions were one-point losers to the Toronto Argonauts. The Lions are the last host team to win. They did so in 1994.
A sellout of the 52,511 B.C. Place ticket inventory at an average price of $295 means estimated gross ticket revenue of $15.34 million for the 99th championship.
The Grey Cup committee estimates the game will provide a $100 million boost to the province’s economy, based on the results of a survey conducted by the 2009 host committee in Calgary.
That year’s Grey Cup game, won by the Montreal Alouettes, drew 46,020 fans to McMahon Stadium. The survey estimated 32,000 fans who attended the festival were from outside the region. Spending by fans and the Grey Cup committee totalled $35.3 million.
The EventCorp “point-of-experience” survey of 6,420 found the average stay in Calgary was 3.6 nights with 20,000 of the visitors using commercial accommodation worth $4.3 million. The total economic spinoff estimated for Alberta was $81 million.
But academics who study national sports championships and mega-events warn that boosters tend to inflate the importance of their events, often for political reasons to justify public investment on operations and capital expenditures on stadiums.
College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. found big sporting events cause a shift in resources from one area of the economy to another, instead of generating new economic activity. Such events tend to displace locals and regular visitors and cause adverse changes in buying habits because of security and transport tie-ups.
Bob Mackin