Geografie 2016, 121, 591-611
Local economic impact of big sport events: the case study of the World championship in ice hockey 2011 in Bratislava
Hosting major sporting events has become an important instrument that brings new impulses for urban and regional development. There is a range of positive and negative impacts in the economic, social, political, and cultural domains, as well as urban regeneration and infrastructure development. This article focuses on an analysis of short-term local impacts of the World Championship in Ice Hockey 2011 in Bratislava, which was based on an extensive survey of visitor expenditures followed by input/output modelling of indirect local effect. Our survey showed that approximately 83,000 non-local visitors spent almost 11 million euros during the event. We estimated that the direct economic impact of the World Championship was 7.5 million euros, of which the largest part was spent on the sphere of hotels and restaurants. The total (direct and indirect) economic impact of visitor spending was 13.6 million euros. Moreover, another 104 million euros was an additional economic impact of related local investments in the sports infrastructure.
Keywords
impact studies, local development, local economic impact, WC 2011 in ice hockey, Bratislava, tourism.
