During football season, Sundays are either the best or worst day of the week, depending on whether or not you like football. It seems pretty well known that if you don’t like football, you’re not going to enjoy being on social media on Sundays. There will be countless posts about all the games happening and the responding; social media isn't supposed to be Sports Center.
I love football so I look forward to Sundays all week, but if you don’t like football you may dread Sundays. If you don’t like sports it may be hard to see, but many people realize, sports can unite people, a city or even a full region of the country.
It may be hard to accept, but a successful sports team can be incredibly important for a city. As a fan of a long-time loser (the Seattle Mariners), it’s easy to lose faith in what sports can do for people, but a successful team can lift the economy of a city and the attitude of the people in it. These effects can be seen through any major sport in America but I will mostly focus on baseball.
The best example is a very recent one. Take a look at how Kansas City has been affected by the Royals recent surge, appearing in the last two world series and winning in 2015, after being another of the long-time losers. The best way to see the economic impact is to look at the money coming in from outside the city. Look at what being in the playoffs last year did for the city. According to economist Jeff Pinkerton, it is realistic that just from fans traveling to Kansas city for the playoffs the city may have made around nine million dollars per game that they wouldn’t have brought in otherwise.
Think about that for a minute. Nine million a game! In total, the Royals played seven home games in the playoffs last year. Multiply that by nine million a game and you get roughly $63 million for the city! From seven nights!
But money brought in during games isn’t the only thing affected when sports teams are successful. You can see all the beautiful images shown of a city when a team makes the playoffs. National television with a huge audience; it is a great way to attract tourist to the city. More tourists and more people in attendance at sporting events lead to more nationally televised games, more tourists and money flowing into the city, higher attendance and more tourism and so on and so on.
Unfortunately many teams in cities that could actually use this economic bump are teams that don’t make the playoffs as much because they don’t have the same opportunities to win. The Yankees have won 26 World Series in their time as a franchise, but I don’t think New York really needs an increase in their tourism. Smaller market teams like Tampa Bay, Kansas City, Milwaukee or Oakland don't have the money to spend to make their teams as good as teams from New York or Los Angeles.
The best way to test the attitude of a city when it comes to sports is attendance. Kansas City averaged around 21,000 people a night in 2013, according to baseballreference.com, the year before they made the playoffs for the first time since 1985. In 2016, the Royals averaged around 33,500 a night. An increase of 12,000 a night! If that doesn’t tell you about the attitude change in the city I don’t know what will. Except maybe that even though Kansas City has a population of around 467,000 they had about 800,00 people show up for their world series parade.
Whether you like sports or not, it is hard to deny the beautiful impact they can have on a city.
