Sport England

The Nation's Biggest Supporter

Value of sports economy in the regions 2003

Consultant: Cambridge Econometrics

The Research
Sport England has commissioned Cambridge Econometrics to undertake an evaluation of the economic impact of sport, initially on a pilot basis in three of Sport England's regions (the East Midlands, South East, and Yorkshire). The economic impact model developed in the pilot phase will then be applied to the remaining six regions.

The aims of this research are to:

Develop a standard economic model that can be applied to all of Sport England's regions to enable comparability between regions and providing a relatively easy mechanism whereby the assessments can be updated to enable us to measure change over time
Conduct economic impact of sport assessments in all 9 Sport England regions
Report the economic value of sport in these regions.

The specific research objectives are to:

Critically assess the LIRC national methodology in terms of its applicability to regional economic impact of sport assessments
Identify the regional sources of relevant economic data
Identify where relevant economic data is not available at the regional level
Collect relevant regional economic data
Apply the LIRC model (or an alternative model if considered to be more appropriate at a regional level) to the regional economic data, initially from 3 pilot regions, in order to ascertain the overall economic impact of sport in each region
Modify the model, as necessary, based on its application to the 3 pilot regions
Apply the modified model (if modifications are required) to the regional economic data from the remaining 6 Sport England regions.