# Do Sports Teams Make Cities Richer? · Michael Doerffler

Canonical: https://rmtdco.com/technical/sports-cities/
Author: Michael Doerffler

> 90 teams, four seasons, joined to federal economic data for 40 metros. The finding: teams cluster in cities that were already wealthy.

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DATA INTEGRATION & VISUALIZATION · GROUP PROJECT (ISM 4930)

## Do Sports Teams Make Cities Richer?

Cities spend billions in public money on stadiums, betting that teams drive local growth. We tested whether that's actually true: 90 teams across three leagues, four seasons, joined to federal income and employment data for 40 metro areas.

The hard part was the data, not the analysis. Teams belong to metro areas; government economic data is published by county; and mid-project, the BEA discontinued the metric we'd planned to use. We rebuilt around personal income, aggregated counties up to metros using OMB delineations, and joined 360 team-seasons to the economic data on a shared key in Tableau.

The finding: teams cluster in cities that were already wealthy. Payroll growth and income growth move independently over time, so the correlation is city size, not cause. The money doesn't follow the teams.

STACK Tableau · Excel · public data (Spotrac, Sports Reference, BEA, BLS, Census, OMB)

METHOD County-to-MSA aggregation via OMB delineations · shared Metro Area join key · three-table model (360 team-seasons across 40 metros) · correlation vs. causation via growth comparison