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OSU AD's Economic Impact

$100,500,000 plus the 80some million dollar budget, thats a lot of money folks.

http://www.dispatch.com/osusports/osusports.php?story=dispatch/2005/02/02/20050202-C1-01.html
OSU sports boost area economy, study says
$100.5 million a year is spent on hotels, dining, shopping
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Barnet D . Wolf
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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</IMG> </TD></TR><TR><TD class=credit width=200>FILE PHOTO </TD></TR><TR><TD class=cutline width=200>Jeremy Uhlenhake signs a goal marker from the 2002 OSU-Michigan game at Columbus City Center. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>



Ohio State University sports provide central Ohio with more than teams to root for.

A study to be released today says OSU athletics add at least $100.5 million a year to the Columbus-area economy.

Most of the benefit comes from people living outside central Ohio who spend money to see Buckeye teams play and on restaurants, hotels and other items while they’re here.

The total excludes most spending associated with Buckeye sports by residents of Franklin and surrounding counties because they likely would spend money for other local entertainment if OSU sports weren’t available.

The presence of OSU athletics "provides a major financial boost to the service sector of the region on an annual basis, especially Franklin County," wrote Patrick Rishe, the study’s author.

Rishe, an economics professor at Webster University in suburban St. Louis and president of the sports-research firm Sportsimpact.com, said that about $80 million comes from outside the Columbus area.

The study’s results didn’t surprise OSU Athletics Director Andy Geiger, who is expected to discuss the report today at a meeting of the Metropolitan Club.

"I knew instinctively that it wouldn’t be just a trivial amount of money," he said. "Our events, particularly football, are regional. We know the ZIP codes of who we mail to, and who buys tickets."

Nearly half the tickets to Ohio State sports events are purchased by people from beyond the six-county region. Rishe calculated that nearly $40 million of OSU’s sports revenues originates outside the area and stays in the central Ohio economy.

Visitors spend $34.5 million more on hotels, dining, shopping, parking and other items, while nearly $1 million comes from out-of-town participants, including athletes, referees and media.

Ohio State commissioned the study, which is unusual because it attempts to measure the economic impact of an entire sports program. Other studies have calculated the impact of a single event, such as the 2003 Fiesta Bowl, which brought an estimated $153.3 million to the Tempe, Ariz., area.

The Holiday Inn on the Lane understands the importance of OSU sports, said Fred Harris, the hotel’s general manager. Football is particularly lucrative because visitors will fill the hotel even when it’s charging premium rates.

"Basketball tends to generate more in the way of food and beverage revenue," he said.

Harris said the hospitality industry around Ohio State has been helped by Geiger’s efforts to bolster the university’s lowerprofile teams and draw to Columbus more NCAA regional tournaments for such sports.

"These unheralded sports have a tremendous impact on us — the soccer, softball, women’s hockey," he said. "They eat here, shop here, stay here."

People from outside the region who attended OSU athletic events spent an estimated $7.4 million annually on dining, $5.3 million on shopping and $3.4 million on lodging, according to the study.

Geiger said he thought the OSU sports economic-impact data "would be pretty special, if we could ever quantify it."

Still, he said that the study was deliberately conservative.

"We didn’t want to gild the lily," Geiger said. "I wanted it to be a respected piece of work academically."

That point was echoed by Rishe, who has prepared other economic-impact studies. He wrote that the study did not attempt to estimate OSU athletics’ marketing value to central Ohio.

As a result, he said, "The true value of OSU athletics is understated when these factors are not accounted for."

[email protected]
http://www.dispatch.com/osusports/osusports.php?story=dispatch/2005/02/02/20050202-C1-06.html
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
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http://www.dispatch.com/osusports/osusports.php?story=dispatch/2005/02/02/20050202-C1-04.html

Wednesday, February 02, 2005
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