Bright Lights, Big City: Do Professional Sports Teams Increase Employment?

When professional sports teams lobby for public money, they inevitably claim that they act as an economic catalyst for the local region. The purpose of this article is to test the validity of this claim. In contrast to previous work in this area, this article borrows from the literature on regional growth in setting up a model that isolates the effect of a city gaining or losing a professional franchise. The analysis concludes that there is no evidence that teams make a significant positive impact to a city’s economy.