No one is suggesting that there is no economic impact.  The author and the people he quotes are simply suggesting that the impact isn’t as large—or nearly as large—as the commissions/associations whose business it is to promote spring training are claiming it to be.

*sigh* For those that don’t bother to read the actual article before commenting…

“The guy that’s using this model probably’s got a bias anyway. So essentially what he does is hire a bunch of [college] kids and they’ll go out to a spring-training game or any sporting event and they’ll ask the people: ‘Why are you here?’ ‘Well I’m here to watch spring training.’ ‘Where are you from?’ ‘I’m from Ohio.’ ‘How many days are you in Florida?’ ‘My family and I, four of us, we’re here for a week.’ And all of a sudden because he was at that game, a whole week’s worth of demand for Florida vacation is attributed to that event. In the model, what goes in is a week’s worth of spending by four people. It’s really not the case that these people only came to Florida because of spring training. They came to Florida because it was a great vacation place and, oh, one of the things they did one afternoon was go watch the local team in a spring-training game.”

I had thought that the current state of research was that regular stadiums usually had a negligible impact, while spring trainging had a large impact, which made sense to me.

@ BillyBeane; Public dollars for pro sports is one issue where liberals and conservatives find common ground.

Typically these initiatives are opposed by 2 groups in the community.  Conservative, anti tax folk who see it as corporate welfare and liberal grassroots folk who would rather see the $$$ spent on education, arts etc. I guess in the end, both groups see it as corporate welfare.