The America's Cup: Economic Impacts of a Match - Bay Area Council

In order to better account for this leakage, the effects of the three months leading up to the America's Cup on the
broader Bay Area, California, and the United States are also evaluated. These results, comparable to Table 6, are
presented below. As the geography gets bigger, the economic benefits increase.
As discussed above, expenditures of local spectators in the San Francisco analysis are discounted by excluding
the spending of those who live in San Francisco and those who came to San Francisco for other reasons − their
expenditures would have happened regardless of the America's Cup. Similarly, when the analysis is expanded to
successively larger geographies, spectator expenditures must be further discounted. The pattern of discounting
used in this report is presented below. It is assumed that of the local visitors (those who drove to San Francisco),
50% are from the broader Bay Area. Therefore, 50% of the local spectator expenditures were discounted for the
Bay Area impact analysis.
Table 9: Assumptions Regarding Spectator Spending
(Percentage that is included in the analysis.)
Type San Francisco Bay Area California United States
Local 100 50 0 0
Non-Local 100 100 90 50
In particular, it is assumed that half of the local visitors are from the Bay Area (the nine-county region) and that
the other half is from the rest of California. Accordingly, their expenditures are completely ignored in the results
pertaining to California. Similarly, the results incorporate the assumption that 10% of the non-local visitors,
those arriving by air, are from California and that 40% are from the rest of the United States, with foreign visitors
making up the remaining 50%.
Table 10 summarizes the differences and the subsequent tables provide more detail. Each row of the table presents
the economic impact on the respective region. The total effect in San Francisco is $1.372 billion, while the overall
effect in the United States is $1.851 billion.
Note that as broader geographies are considered, the direct effects decline. This is a result of the assumptions
above regarding spectator expenditures. These declines are significant, with direct expenditures for the country
as a whole being nearly $200 million less than when only the city and county of San Francisco is considered. 14
14 This is because visitors to San Francisco from Illinois provide spending in San Francisco that wouldn't otherwise occur, but it is assumed
that if they had not come to San Francisco, they would have travelled to some other U.S. destination. Therefore, the spending of
all U.S. spectators is excluded from the analysis of the United States, where some $200 million of it is included as new spending when only
San Francisco is considered.
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