Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 09, 2009
The Economics of Spring Training

Take the impact of spring training with a grain of salt when you hear politicians claim how much business it brings to an area:

Porter questions whether a six-week training camp can generate enough revenue to justify public expenditures that large.

He cites estimates that the New York Yankees' spring training operation, which moved from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa, generates $100 million annually for the local economy. If that's true, he says, Tampa's economy should have grown by $100 million when the Yankees arrived, and Fort Lauderdale would have taken a similar-sized hit.

"Did we grow and did Fort Lauderdale shrink? The answer is no," he said. "There's no change in taxable sales in the communities that lost or gained a team. ... There's no change in the hotel occupancy. Why in the world aren't these things generating the kind of impact that the governor's office says they do?"

Tourists spend plenty of money, but Porter points out a lot of the cash goes to the teams - who take their profits with them when they leave town at the end of March.

Another reason to leave building stadiums to the teams.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:41 AM | Spring Training | TrackBack (0)
Comments

The Orioles took over the Ft. Lauderdale stadium, so the impact of the Yankees moving out was lessened.

Posted by: Dantheman at February 9, 2009 04:48 PM
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