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Professional sports have $6 million economic impact
By Lindsay Danzell
Contributing Writer
When a South Carolina Stingrays player slaps a hockey puck into the net, a siren blares to signify the goal. But to the Charleston Metropolitan Sports Council, it sounds less like an alarm and more like “ka-ching.”
This October, the council reported a $6 million economic impact from Charleston’s professional sports teams in 2005.
The three teams covered by the council’s impact study were the Charleston RiverDogs baseball team, the South Carolina Stingrays hockey team and the Charleston Battery soccer team. The Charleston Sandsharks indoor football team began play after the timeframe of the study.
The study did not include the economic impact of other sporting events in the Lowcounty, such as the Family Circle Cup tennis tournament and the Cooper River Bridge Run. Those events were analyzed separately and compiled for the 2006 Charleston Metro Sports Scene.
Teams in the Charleston area combine to host a professional sporting event about once every three days, not including playoffs and special events.
In 2005, Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal ranked Charleston No. 17 out of 230 minor-league markets. To extract that figure, the journal looked at a number of criteria, including attendance percentages in terms of population and franchise tenure in the market.
Kathleen Cartland, executive director of the Charleston Metropolitan Sports Council, said all of the sporting events in the Lowcountry account for more than a $60 million impact on the economy.
“We’re fortunate in Charleston to have such a vibrant local sports environment and these numbers underline the combined economic strength of our teams,” said Andrew Bell, director of soccer and stadium operations for the Battery.
“It is good to note that focusing on quality family entertainment can also have a positive economic impact for the community.”
Local professional sports teams host between 20 and 30 visiting players per event. The Travel Industry Association estimates each player spends $361 on average per away event.
Last year, approximately 558,500 people attended professional sporting events in Charleston, according to the council. The council also charted the effect the teams had on travel in the region. Visitor days due to the three teams in the study were estimated to be 25,000. As most visitors came in groups of two or three people, the council estimated that visitors spent about 12,500 nights in hotels in Charleston, at $112 per night.
The sports-travel market is one of the fastest-growing segments of the visitor industry, according to Cartland.
To put the professional sports statistics in perspective, 5.1 million visitors had a $5.4 billion impact on Charleston’s economy in 2005, according to the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce.
“The economic impact that the Charleston RiverDogs and all of the professional sports make on our community is indeed impressive and we’re proud to be a huge part of the equation,” said Dave Echols, general manger of the RiverDogs. “However, what the economic impact study doesn’t reveal is the ‘fun quotient’ that we provide our fans, and in that regard, we’re more than proud to lead the way.”
Top 20 sporting events in Charleston
The Sports 20 Index complied by the Charleston Metropolitan Sports Council charts the top 20 sporting events in the Lowcountry in terms of most visitors, including both participants and spectators.
The index includes events as diverse as the Family Circle Cup women’s tennis tournament, which has a total prize purse of more than $1.3 million; the Cooper River Bridge Run, which drew more than 35,000 runners and thousands more walkers in 2006; and the Red Cross Rotary Roundball Classic, considered one of the top 10 high school basketball tournaments in the country.
These 20 events generated more than $50 million in direct economic impact. Kathleen Cartland, executive director of the council, said these events comprised 80% of a total economic impact of more than $60 million generated by sports in the Lowcountry in 2005.
At these 20 events, more than 61,850 people participated and more than 133,000 attended the events as spectators. Of those numbers, 44% of participants and spectators were from outside the Charleston area. That’s 77,940 visitors generated by these events. The council found direct spending by these visitors tallied more than $29 million, with indirect spending reaching more than $50 million.
Because of the number of sporting events held in Charleston each year, in addition to team games, the market is considered a “mega market” by the Travel Industry Association. Each event held in a mega market generates $287,000 on average, according to TIA.
These numbers do not account for tourism resulting from media exposure generated by the events.
For more information on the top 20 sporting events, see the council’s 2006 Charleston Metro Sports Scene resource guide or visit www.sportscouncil.org.
Meet Charleston’s professional teams
Baseball. First established as the Charleston Seagulls in 1886, the team became the RiverDogs in 1994. The team, which plays in the Class A South Atlantic League, made the playoffs in 2004 and 2005. The team’s stadium, Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park, opened in 1997 and is ranked by Baseball America as one of the top 15 minor league baseball parks in the country. The seated capacity of Riley Park is listed as 5,500, but more than 8,200 fans attended the July 3 game this year to set the franchise’s single-game attendance record. The RiverDogs drew 267,908 in 2006, an average of 3,999 per game, to set a new attendance record for a season.
Soccer. Established in 1993, the Charleston Battery began play in Division II of the United Soccer League and won league titles in the USISL Pro League in 1995 and the A-League in 2003. This season, the Battery made it to the semifinals of the USISL First Division playoffs and to the semifinals of the U.S. Open Cup. The Battery play in Blackbaud Stadium on Daniel Island, one of the country’s first soccer-only stadiums. In 2003, the team drew 70,170 fans for 18 home games
Hockey. The South Carolina Stingrays were established in 1993 as a member of the East Coast Hockey League. In the 1996-97 season, the Stingrays became the first team in league history to win both the ECHL’s regular season and playoffs. They won the playoffs again in 2001. The Stingrays are one of the tenants of the North Charleston Coliseum, which opened in 1993. When configured for hockey, the coliseum has a current seating capacity of 10,429. The Stingrays had an average attendance of more than 6,500 in 2005-06, and set a single-game attendance record of 10,562 during the 1997-98 season.
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