From one-off impact studies to portfolio measurement in major sporting events
Traditional one-off impact studies for major sporting events often end up validating decisions after the fact. Experts from The Sports Consultancy argue that a different approach is needed – one that looks across entire portfolios and multiple event editions. This broader lens helps turn measurement into a tool for continuous, actionable improvement.
Most major events across the world come with a headline impact number. Billions in economic output. Thousands of jobs. Millions of visitors. The number gets quoted, circulated, filed away, and reached for again the next time a bid is prepared or a budget needs defending.
Most of these studies share three characteristics: they are not comparable to each other, they are never updated, and they were not designed to drive a decision. They were designed to justify one that had already been made.
Making a case for portfolio impact measurement
In 2024, Destination Vancouver measured the economic impact of 187 events across its entire annual portfolio – not a single flagship, but a full calendar of sport, culture, and business events – through one consistent framework. $338 million in direct spending. Over $544 million in total economic output. Tracked year on year, across the whole programme.
The output is not a press release. It is operational intelligence – which events drove room nights, which activated local communities, which underperformed and why. Investment decisions for the following year followed the evidence. That is the compounding effect: each year’s measurement sharpens the next year’s choices.
Putting it into practice at AlUla
This is the gap The Sports Consultancy was asked to close for the Royal Commission for AlUla. Working with AFALULA and RCU’s Sports Sector, we developed a Sport Sector Economic Impact Tool to measure and manage impact across RCU’s entire sports programme; international events, recurring competitions, infrastructure assets, community initiatives.
Over 70 stakeholders involved across five months of development. The capability sits inside RCU permanently, not in an external report archive. The tool works from benchmarked and forecast inputs, from attendance, event type, duration, venue. RCU can model the return on a prospective investment before committing, track performance across the portfolio in real time, and produce evidence that holds up to scrutiny from government and commercial partners alike.
No bespoke econometric study required for every event. A consistent methodology applied across all of them, producing the same KPIs each time so performance can actually be compared.
Economic return is the entry point, not the full picture
The returns that matter most over time (improved community wellbeing, long-term participation growth, the property premium that builds around well-run venues) rarely show up in visitor spend data. In year one they are hard to see. In year ten, when governments are reporting against Vision 2030 targets and investors are reselling assets, they tend to be the numbers that define the legacy story.
The Sports Consultancy’s work with Daniel Fujiwara – a contributor to the OECD Social Value Framework and the UK Treasury’s Green Book – brings the same rigour to social return that economic studies bring to GDP and room nights. The methodology sits alongside economic measurement rather than replacing it. Together they give a complete account of what a sports portfolio actually delivers.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure
Events with multi-year planning cycles will continue to attract support only if they evidence ongoing impact, not by waiting for post-event legacy reporting that arrives too late to change anything. The same applies to multi-edition events and major infrastructure projects: the organisations that build data-informed measurement into their operations from the start are the ones with the tools to continuously improve both economic and social outcomes, edition by edition.
The question is no longer whether impact should be measured. It is whether the measurement is good enough to act on.
