[LINK] "Football Folly"

[rfmcdonald]

Back in November 2007 I blogged about the possibility that Toronto might acquire its own NFL, American-rules, football team, perhaps by appropriating Buffalo's. That didn't materialize. But apparently Mayor Rob Ford wants to bring a NFL team regardless.

The Brothers Ford got many Torontonians spluttering out their morning coffee today with the proclamation that they had hopes of bringing an NFL franchise to the city. Let us set aside—for a moment—the fact that the NFL has given us every indication that they aren't interested and that previous attempts to bring a team here have failed miserably. Let us set aside that the notion of finding private partners to build a one-billion-dollar stadium (the estimated cost of an arena big enough to meet the NFL's preferred seventy-five-thousand-seat threshhold) is right now only a pipe dream. Let us set aside the appearance that the Fords are conflating their personal hobbies with the city's interests. Let us set aside the uneasy feeling of hearing numbers like "one billion dollars" bandied about when this week members of the public have been asking the budget committee to please, just please, reconsider one-hundred-thousand-dollar cuts to various community services.

Instead, let us focus for a moment on this: Rob Ford has contended that an NFL franchise would be a real financial boost for the city, creating jobs and generating tourist revenue that would make the team worthwhile for everyone in Toronto, football fan or not.

Is there reason to think that might be true?

Not according to Brad Humphreys, a professor at the University of Alberta who specializes in the economics of sport. We spoke with him by phone earlier today:

Torontoist: What was your initial reaction to Mayor Ford's contention that bringing an NFL franchise to Toronto would be a clear economic win for the city?

Humphreys: That he's not very well informed of the realities about the impact of sports franchises on urban centres. I have studied this for ten years, and...I have not found one shred of evidence that suggests that the presence of a professional sports francise in a city has any tangible economic impact.

[Later, Humphreys returns to this point and adds...] He's made the claim that one of the big economic components will be that Toronto will get to host the Super Bowl. Well in fact there's no evidence that mega-events like the Super Bowl generate economic activity. Toronto is a tourist destination; people come to visit all the time. Yes, [the Super Bowl] brings tourists to the city, but those are not new tourists: it's just one group of tourists—booking hotel rooms, eating in restaurants, and so on—crowding out another group that would have been there otherwise.

Go, read the rest of Hamutal Dotan's interview with Humphreys at Torontoist.