Economic Impact of the Bills on Erie County?

[zonabb]

Give me a guess as to the total number of fans for each home game that fall into the same travel/spending category as yourself.  Would you say 5,000?  Maybe even 10,000?

 

Using your $600 per person spending level for these folks, that equates to just $24 million to $48 million per season in "new" revenue to the area.  Again, in the grand scheme of things, that's just a drop in the bucket from an economic impact perspective.

 

For comparison sake, here's the annual economic impact of some other WNY organizations:

 

University of Buffalo--$1.4 billion annually

 

Delphi Automotive Lockport plant--$700 million

 

Chevy Tonawanda engine plant--$500 million

 

Buffalo Sabres--$60+ million

 

http://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/...22503report.htm

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I have taken some graduate level econ classes and there is really no sense arguing economic impacts because the I think that the social (i.e, quality of life) return is more valuable. I worked with a professor from Colorado who was trying to create and measure what he called SROI, or social return on investment, in simple terms, a way give a philanthropic organization an measurment of social benefits from its investment, say in a community based non-profit.

 

The bottom line here is, just like the libraries, parks, etc. the social effect of the Bills far exceeds the economic.

 

The problem is, many people have a problem with tax dollars being spent on a multimillion dollar organizations. But I say, as an urban planner who hates economic development with a passion (aka corporate welfare), as long as we're paying Ford, Chevy, Geico, Bass Pro, etc money, how are the Bills different?

 

Chew on this...... ECIDA or some other development agency gave Ford in Hamburg $1 mil to upgrade its equipment a few years back un threat of "well, we have to remain competitive or we'll have to leave."

 

So as long as it works for Ford, it should remain working for the Bills.

[Tcali]

Slow?  Next time you take a crap, watch how fast it goes down.....  This city would do the same

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Elegantly put Sir Lawrence Olivier

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

I am an economist, BTW.

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So was Kenneth Lay.

 

[obie_wan]

To put it nicely, if the Bills left Buffalo...Western New York would die a slow and painful death.

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WNY is already dying a slow and painful death.

 

If the Bills leave, the area will be put out of its misery very quickly.

 

The area will never recover from emotional loss caused by the Bills leaving.