Do New Sports Facilities Prompt New Business in Local Communities?

How well do new sports facilities promote economic growth in a community? Recently published in the Journal of Sports Economics, the article “Do New Sports Facilities Attract New Businesses?” from authors Kaitlyn Harger, Brad Humphreys, and Amanda Ross seeks to answer this question by analyzing how many new businesses open following the opening a new sports facility in a community. The abstract for the paper:

We examine the impact of new sports facilities on new businesses, an unexplored topic in the literature. We use data from the Dun and Bradstreet MarketPlace files to examine how new sports facilities affect nearby business activity in terms of the number of new businesses and workers. We find no evidence of increased new businesses openings after the opening of new sports facilities in 12 U.S. cities in the 2000s; employment at new businesses near new facilities is larger than at new businesses elsewhere in the metropolitan statistical area; this increase cannot be linked to businesses in any specific industry.

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