Economist: NFL Lockout Would Make for $20 Million in Lost Economic Activity per Game on Average

Dr. Jesse David:The range is – and I’ll pull up the exact numbers here. The range is $12 to $40 million in the ten studies. That’s in current dollars. You’d get different numbers if you went and you looked at the actual studies say from 2002.

But if you bring them all current it’s $12 to $40 million. The biggest number I think was in – for the Texans facility and the smallest one might have been the Colts.

But I – and I’d have to go back and look through them one by one, but I’m pretty sure those two. As far as the type of jobs, there are the players of course who have a significant portion of those earnings, but the bulk of it is what is known as indirect economic activity, which is the spending by the public in – or the media or other visitors in restaurants, hotels and other local businesses.

That’s most of the spending and therefore translates into most of the jobs. Restaurants will cut back or close. Local – and by the way there is all the rest of the economy that exists to support the spending and the jobs in restaurant and hotel, for example health care.

If you’ve got more restaurant workers you need more healthcare workers in the local economy. Obviously if you’re going to lose those jobs that might take some time.

It wouldn’t necessarily happen over the course of one week, and that’s why we believe that the $160 million, that full number, and the 3000 jobs is most likely to be reached over say a longer lockout period.

But you would definitely have some losses even in the short term, for example the workers at the stadium itself, day of game workers such as concessions, parking, security.

In terms of the precise share of the 3000 average that is made up by each of those categories, I think I’d have to go back and do an analysis that I haven’t done in terms of breaking it down. But again all of that information is available publicly.

Operator:Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to register for a question, press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone.

Dr. Jesse David:I hope that answered your question as well as I can at this point. Anyone else?

Operator:There are no further questions at this time.

George Atallah:I have – let me inject two final thoughts if there are no additional questions. I got to the office today. I looked at the New York Times and the front page of the New York Times was Jobless Rate Hits 9.8%.

The – there is no question what kind of impact the NFL has on the local economies and cities. We can debate the range or the amount, but I think it’s interesting to me that the league decided to once this first round of stories came out, decided to put a headline that was “Union Spinning Economic Fairytales.”

That is interesting to me because these are their own figures. These are the numbers that they use to get public financing for their stadiums, and use taxpayer dollars to get financing for their stadiums.

So unfortunately I think it’s a situation now where we know that there’s going to be an impact. Dr. David’s findings and Jesse’s findings have shown that there is a negative job loss and revenue loss for these cities, and that’s what we’re trying to really focus on over the course of the next couple of months, because we know that this game reverberates beyond just the players and the owners.