Sporting Events

The Economics of Major Sporting Events

In the modern age where money and sport go hand in hand, the economic impact of major sporting events, such as the football and rugby World Cups, the Olympics or an F1 Grand Prix, has grown exponentially. Most recently, in the 2015 Rugby World Cup held in England, the match between the hosts and Australia was dubbed "The billion pound match". On their own bets on the match reached the some of £10 million, add to that the ticket prices, the money spent in pubs, merchandise purchased and TV rights and a truly huge sum of money was spent.

This is a modern phenomena that has come with the advent of the online world. thanks to the internet almost anyone anywhere can access an event whether it be through he purchase of merchandise, a TV subscription or the placing of bets. Due to the now worldwide connections provided by transport and the internet, demand to go and sees these events has risen and it too has had an effect on the money in sport.

Demand refers to how much (quantity) of a product or service that is desired by buyers. the relationship between price and quantity demanded is known as the demand relationship. As demand increases relative to supply, it is this statement that applies to the current sporting events of the world. In context, the more people there are trying to buy the limited number of seats, the higher the price of those seats.

Elasticity is the measure of a variable's sensitivity to a change in another variable. in economics, elasticity refers to the degree to which individuals change their demand in response to price or income changes. The more elastic something is the more demand changes. The most elastic products or services tend to be "necessities". other products that have high elasticity are those that have an existing high demand.

In the modern day money and sport are inextricably linked, both go hand hand in hand and have effects on each other. Sport is changing for the good or the bad is yet to be seen.