My organization has been estimating the economic impact of a major league sports team for nearly 15 years. The estimate is always based on the annual operations of the team and the out of area visitor spending during the season. The team would like to total up all the annual estimates to talk about the the overall impact since the team's new stadium was opened. I know the model has changes over the years. Is this a reasonable number to present or is there a better way to talk about the multi-year total output of the team?
Analysis over time
-
Official comment
Good afternoon!
We typically recommend reporting average annual figures as opposed to reporting the values summed together. So summing all results (using the same Dollar Year for an apples to apples comparison), and then dividing by the total number of years. For instance, say that over the 15 years of results that you have a total of 30,000 jobs years supported. It would be fair to report that "Over the past 15 years, the economic impact supported by this sports team supported an average annual employment of 2,000 jobs".
However, it would not necessarily be incorrect to report your results as a summed value. As long as we are using like Dollar Years, emphasizing the time period that these Impacts represent, and using verbiage such as "supported" or "contributed to" in lieu of "created", you would be ok to report the overall impact since the stadium was opened.
Hope this helps,
Michael Nealy
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
1 comment