A Critical Analysis of Two Contrasting Papers

25-7A04-00S Methods of Enquiry
MA Accounting and Finance Joe Curtis
A Critical Analysis of two contrasting papers
PAPER 1
Journal: Managing Leisure 5, 17–28 (2000)
Title: The economic importance of major sports events: a case-study of six events
Authors: Chris Gratton, Nigel Dobson and Simon Shibli
PAPER 2
Journal: Managing Leisure 11, 57–70 (January 2006)
Title: The economic impact of local sport events: significant, limited or otherwise? A
case study of four swimming events
Author: Robert Wilson
Name: Joe Curtis
Student Number: 1700942
Hand in Date: 7th January 2011
Word Count: 2825
Additional information:
MA Accounting and Finance Sheffield Business School

Sheffield Hallam University
Page 1
This assignment aims to critically analyse two papers selected by the author. As a
background to why the papers were chosen it is due to the authors previous dealing
on this subject in which he undertook as part of his dissertation in the third year at
Sheffield Hallam University in the subject of Sport and Leisure management. The
dissertation used both papers in order to help carry out an economic impact study of
a sporting event in Sheffield.
The most logical starting point would be to look at the older paper as the newer
paper is in relation to the former. So as a starting point one must ask themselves
why is the article interesting/important? Well the reason comes down to the time in
which the paper was released. The paper was released in 2000 and the research
undertaken throughout 1997. Why the timing is relevant however lies in the previous
research into the topic. As stated in (Wilson, 2006) the first major event to make any
real surplus was the Los Angeles 1984 and since then other major events have
started to make profit and generate significant demand to host. Due to this, research
needed to be carried out in order to fully establish which events make money and
how in order to, if the opportunity arises, to make a profit when hosting these events.
No real evidence into the economic benefits of events had been conducted in the UK
up until this time so the research was vital. The fact why this paper is so interesting
is due to the fact that it was new research into a very limited field of knowledge, so
the conclusions drawn had to be proved to be the case as all literature in the future
would revolve around the research presented. This may give information as to why
the research was undertaken in 1997 and yet the paper wasn’t published until 2000
as it gave the authors 3 years to process the data and correctly define their findings.
Moving onto the actual research carried out for the paper, the research question was
to find out the economic impact of 6 sporting events held in the UK in 1997. The key
motivation behind why the question was being asked was as previously mentioned
the ever expanding demand for major sporting events due to their successes. UK
sport wanted to not only understand which events were able to make strong
economic impact but in line with this research UK Sport also produced a document
Measuring success in which it sets out exactly the correct way in which to carry out
an economic impact study on an event and documents each event in more detail as
to how the methodology was followed and more detailed breakdown of results. From
then on measuring success has had two follow up editions in 2004 and 2006. So

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again this proves that the research was at the forefront of pushing the knowledge
bank on this subject further forward.
The research is based around discovering the economic impact of the events and
although not fully documented in this paper (a little more thoroughly in Wilson 2006),
it required a random sample to be acquired at the event of all kinds of different
people to cover all those involved, this ranges from the athletes themselves to the
officials, spectators, volunteers and even tradesmen. The sampling was undertaken
by the researchers who spread themselves through the crowd at regular points all
around each stadia in order to give everyone at the event an opportunity to be
stopped by a researcher, this made the sampling random. However one can argue
that it restricts the sampling to those who get up and wander around at the sporting
event compared to those who stay in their seats and watch all of the action. Due to
this the results could be somewhat skewed and not take into account that those
getting up out of their seats to buy food/merchandise were those getting sampled
and thus it gives a higher economic impact due to those not spending money not
getting questioned.
Another point to raise here is that according to UK Sport (1999) in their measuring
success publication is that a sample size of at least 200 is required for the results to
be legitimate as a proportion of the crowd. As Gratton, Dobson and Shibli (2000)
state 4306 visitors were questioned however if you look to the results section this
overall number is broken down into different categories like previously stated,
competitor, official etc. Due to this to be able to make a conclusive result from the
research into these different user groups the sample needs to be reaching 200 to get
a valid result, due to this the random sampling may fall short on the competitor and
official side of the proceedings, due to those having to be targeted to get responses.
Also if the event has international competitors some researchers may steer clear of
lesser English speaking nations in order to make it easier to comprehend the
questionnaires, Due to this the results may not take into account the spending habits
of the competitor/officials as a whole, but more targeted at those countries where
English is one of their spoken languages.
Saying this one must remember that the aim of the research is to find out the
economic impact for the sporting events, this will be found out whether the results
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are biased or not, the reason to question the methodology is to be able to say
whether the results gained from the research are viable and reliable. The paper its
self doesn’t self assess its methodology and viability as it is more based solely on
getting the results out into the airwaves than fully describing the whole method of the
research, this is more covered in the UK Sport measuring success publication as
previously mentioned. Due to this it is hard to evaluate the paper on whether it did
fully question its own research gathering techniques as to whether the results will be
validated. However knowing what is contained within the measuring success
publication it is safe to say that the methodology is rigid and that any problems with
collecting the research are well documented.
One thing yet to mention is the multiplier effect that is stated in the methodology it
links in closely to the point raised about those sat down not getting questioned to
those walking about who may have answered the questionnaire. The point is that
due to pre-arrangement with the organisers of the events the research team will find
out how many spectators actually visited the event throughout the day. If let’s say
1000 people visited yet only 200 questionnaires were taken, then the team would
take the 200 questionnaires collate the data and make an average for the amount a
person would spend on food and drink, merchandise, entertainment and travel for
instance. To then get the overall amount of economic impact for spectators the 200
questionnaires would then be multiplied by 5 because 1000 people went to spectate
that day. This method of multiplying the results to fulfil the rest of the quota of those
not acquired when researching is widely regarded as the way to go about things, but
results must be looked at with caution because those missed as stated above could
have different spending habits to those who were actually questioned. The way to
combat this is to gain the largest proportion of the group of answers as possible. If
200 questionnaires out of 1000 people were taken it means the multiplier is 5X,
however if 500 were taken the multiplier would only be 2 meaning the results are
much more accurate. As well as this a second multiplier which is spoken about in
detail in the paper points out that leakages occur when looking at the business side
of the equation. These leakages are just assumed to be a figure of 20% due to the
kind of city Sheffield is however just picking a percentage to use as a figure although
again widely regarded as the best figure to use, doesn’t really have much backing
behind why it is used apart from the basic principle of the theory that there are
leakages. Due to this again the results won’t be 100% accurate due to the nature of
the amount of money passing hands and no real way of keeping track of it.

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The results section of the paper clearly goes into a lot of detail about how the break
down between event and then user group spending at each event varies. The results
then go on to suggest attendance figures of each event and why certain spending is
higher at some sports compared to others due to the way in which the event is run/
those who attend the event. This is where the research really hits the mark; due to
this evidence that certain sports have different attendance figures compared to
amount of people participating it lead the researchers to investigate if there was a
certain type of sport that fit into different typologies, which can be seen in the paper.
The breaking down of events into typologies makes it easier to understand why
some events generate large economic impacts and those that are very large events
but don’t generate as much economic impact.
The findings of the research lead the team to create 4 typologies, each of which is
categorised in its own way on size and how regular the competition is. The research
also leads to some key findings for instance that one off events (type C) have very
wild predicted audience figures and in such can be very hit or miss on whether those
figures will be successful shown very clearly by the boxing figures in table 3.
The importance of the typologies leads this assignment quite nicely towards the
second paper. The second paper is again an economic impact research based
paper, however it is written in 2006. The importance that it was written in 2006 is that
the first paper has since its time been widely used, alongside measuring success as
a way of defining the predicted economic impacts of events in the UK and also
carrying out the research of these events. Wilson (2006) refers to both paper 1 and
the measuring success publication in his paper, this is because the measuring
success publication gives him the same methodology in which he then goes on to
use for the research and paper 1 because Wilson challenges the typologies and their
arrangement.
Wilson in his research is trying to question where do local smaller sized events fit in
the typology if they make a substantial economic benefit to the local area. Over 8
days of competition the research found that £80,000 was generated in economic
impact for the local area.

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The difference between the two studies is that firstly the scales of the events were a
lot different; paper 1 was dealing with “major” events such a world championships
etc and paper 2 was dealing with more minor event such as open meetings.
However one must state that just because an event doesn’t have the major element
attached to it, it doesn’t necessarily mean the level of competition is lower, as open
competitions can house the best in the world still, they just don’t demand such a
great following. Thing not taken into account in the second paper is the off placement
of recreational swimming that might have occurred if the event wasn’t taking place.
Although this figure may be quite small it isn’t equated into the final results presented
so the results will show an overstatement of the actual economic impact because
some of the impact that could have usually happened has been cut off by the event.
Due to the fact that the methodologies are almost identical one must look to what
has previously been stated about sampling and the flaws within the system because
they apply to the second paper as well. As for individual flaws in paper 2 assessment
of the methodology very little has been stated as to how the results were validated,
the only mention of sample size states that an average of 214 surveys were
completed at each event, however to then break down each event into user groups
this forms a question as to how many people were in each user group? Due to this
the validity of those groups that had very few users’ answers means that the
numbers could be regarded as irrelevant. However Wilson (2006) does state that the
results were skimmed by 1% margin top and bottom of the answers, this is to tidy up
the data set and get rid of those who were the freak users who were let’s say
throwing their cash around more than the average user. Carrying out this set does
make one think that the validity of the results, even if only a few number of surveys
were collected for some groups should echo the average in total of user group
spending if effort was taken to throw away the freak spending spree’s or tight
pockets.
The overall results of paper 2 leads Wilson to draw his own conclusions towards
typologies and that Gratton, Dobson and Shibli were wrong in thinking that only 4
typologies existed. Wilson in his conclusion suggests that a new typology should be
added to the list a Type E in which it took into account more local regular based
events. This new thought and proof that a new typology exists points towards the
original typologies being too focused on major events. If really there are more type of
events that can make economic impact then they too should have been discovered
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and included into the original typology thoughts. Due to it not being detected by
Gratton, Dobson and Shibli (2000) one has to question whether their narrow-
mindedness has missed out more than one extra typology or if another though
pattern should be implemented. Wilson (2006) cries out that more research is
needed in order to create a more structured and proven typology system in his
conclusions section, is this due to the fact that he suspects that further typologies are
missed out and that the subject needs more research.
Well Curtis (2010) agrees that more research is needed to be carried out due to new
research into a table tennis championship in 2009. Curtis believes that certain sports
will have their own typology in which they will fit into; either a competitor or spectator
driven user group or a mix and from this set of typologies certain sports are classed
added with the size of that event, according to Gratton, Dobson and Shibli (2000),
the economic impact of certain events can be much easier to predict. Due to this
added evidence it furthermore brings into question whether paper 1 had too narrow a
focus on “major” sporting events because of the extremely large one off payments
that can amount from them, compared to the little competitions that happen more
regularly which could amount to much more than those one of larger competitions.

Page 7
References
CURTIS, Joseph (2010). An assessment of the economic impact of the English

Open Table Tennis Championship 2009 on Sheffield. Bsc (Hons) Sport and Leisure
Management, Health and Wellbeing, Sheffield Hallam University.
Gratton, C., Dobson, N. and Shibli, S. (2000). The economic importance of major
sport events: a case study of six events, Managing Leisure, 5, 17–28.
UK Sport (2004). Measuring Success 2. [Online] Last accessed 5th January 2011 at:
www.uksport.gov.uk/docLib/Publications/Measuring-Success-2.pdf
UK Sport (2006). Measuring Success 3. [Online] Last accessed 5th January 2011 at:
www.uksport.gov.uk/docLib/Publications/Measuring-Success-3.pdf
Wilson, R. (2006). The economic impact of local sport events: significant, limited or
otherwise? A case study of four swimming events, Managing Leisure, 11, 57-70.

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25-7A04-00S Methods of Enquiry

MA Accounting and Finance Joe Curtis