The cost of losing a National Football League franchise: evidence from hotel occupancy data

ABSTRACT

In the past five years, San Diego and St. Louis lost National Football League franchises to Los Angeles. This paper uses daily data on hotel room rentals, average room rates, and hotel revenue to examine the effect that losing NFL franchises will have on those cities. For comparison, other events including professional baseball and hockey franchises, Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, and two college football bowl games are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Hotel occupancy
• economic impact
• National Football League
• Major League Baseball

JEL Classification:

• Z23
• Z28

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ The estimation period for St. Louis is 1 January 2011 to 31 March 2016 and the estimation period for San Diego is 1 January 2012 to 31 March 2017.

² Limitations of using hotel occupancy data to analyse the economic effects of sports events include not capturing day visitors, not capturing visitors who do not stay in hotels, and not capturing non-lodging spending such as food, beverages, and souvenirs. (See Depken and Fore 2020 for a case study using daily restaurant revenue data to analyse the effects of sports and cultural events.) Hotel occupancy data also do not capture the modest, according to Johnson, Mondello, and Whitehead (2007), amenity value that teams have for local residents.