NCAA Tournament Was Worth How Much to Atlanta’s Economy?

More than 24,000 fans packed the Georgia Dome Sunday to watch the University of Kentucky take on Baylor in the men’s NCAA South Regional final.

K.C. Brown of Cision Global Analysts says that’s anybody’s guess. 

“They just want to come up with a big number and they’ll call that a ‘value,’ or they’ll say ‘This is our return on investment.’  But in reality, there’s no fungibility to that value,” he says. 

And here’s why.  

Take Kentucky fan Jeff Clark, who’s sitting in a blue folding chair outside of the Georgia Dome ticket office.  Even the beer in his hand won’t ease the pain of what he had to pay to get here. 

“I spent about $800 for the room, tickets to park, tickets for both games,” he says, adding that it is worth every penny to be here.

Not far away, standing amid a sea of neon green Baylor shirts, is Mindy Flores.  The Baylor student got a pretty sweet deal to get here to the “Sweet 16.”

“It was $100 for the ticket plus hotel for two nights.”

So if all 24,000 fans inside the Georgia Dome spend $800, like UK fan Jeff Clark, that would translate into more than $19,000,000.  

But if most people spent $100, like the Baylor students, that’s only about $2,400,000.

The nice thing–everyone’s spending something.  And no matter how you look at it, that’s good for Atlanta.

Now, after Kentucky’s 82-70 victory over Baylor, the tens of thousands of fans will take what’s left in their wallets and head toward New Orleans and the Final Four.