Twelfth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

In the context of tourism, sports are one of the major attractions countries offer. Previous studies assessing the economic impact of sporting events have usually been partial equilibrium studies. The aim of this work is to contribute to the emerging body of literature by explicitly incorporating four categories of sports tourism events (competitions, championships, tournaments, and leagues), so as to study the effects of sports tourism demand on the economic system in terms of income and added value. A probabilistic sample design for sporting events was prepared covering the year 2018 in Castile and Leon, which was representative in the sense that the maximum error level was 5% (alpha = 0.05). Investigations gathered direct information from the 6,981 people participating in sporting events, both competitors and fans which were broken down into 3,215 people (46.1%) involved in 11 championships (28.9%), 2,170 people (31.1%) connected with 13 competitions (34.2%), 607 people (8.7%) taking an active or passive part in 8 leagues (21.1%) and 989 people (14.2%) with some engagement with 6 tournaments (15.8%). Results highlight that, in terms of percentage, the accommodation (48.2%) and food and drink (34.5%) expenses are those with the highest values acquired, with a range between 27% (in accommodation during the leagues) and 51.9% (in food and drink in the leagues).