A pair of West Virginia University economics professors said having a professional sports team in town doesn’t necessarily mean there will be a run on hotel rooms on game day.
But college games can impact the local hotel room inventory, said WVU professors Brad Humphreys and Adam Nowak.
In the Morgantown area, for example, the price of hotel rooms can more than double when the Mountaineers have a home football game.
“College football is clearly a bigger draw than pro sports,” said Brad Humphreys, a professor in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics. “Many fans travel from out of town to watch college football games. Most are played on weekends, when fan travel is easier and less costly.”
In their study, Humphreys and Nowak examined data from 2002 to 2017 from hotels within four miles of the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The Staples Center was chosen as their venue because it is home to three professional sports teams — the Lakers and Clippers in the National Basketball Association and the Kings in the National Hockey League.
“We focused on the Staples Center because of how intensely it is used by pro teams,” Humphreys said. “No other arena is home to three pro sports teams. Our idea was that if we were going to find evidence that pro sports brings in significant numbers of out-of-town fans, this would be where to look.”
What they found flies in the face of claims often made by cities where professional sports teams are based. On days that any of the three Los Angeles teams play at the Staples Center, average daily room rates declined. Room rates, the study said, were $3 less per night on an NHL game day rather than a non-game day.
“Pro sports just aren’t a main selling point for the ‘City of Angels,’ ’’ he said.
On NBA game days, hotels charged less for rooms and rented 95 less rooms, about $23,000 less in revenue than on hockey game days. By comparison, the study found on prolonged work stoppages — like player strikes — hotels around Staples Center did better business than on game days.
“These results should apply to Pittsburgh, for example,” Humphreys said. “Also, a similar study in Charlotte found roughly the same results.
“It is not clear that TV is the reason. Many pro games are televised in the local market, usually on local or regional sports networks.”
Humphreys, who is currently studying hotel room demand and price for towns near Southeastern Conference football stadiums on game weekends, said college football is clearly a bigger draw than pro sports.
“We have some preliminary results for hotels in cities home to SEC football teams,” he said. “Hotel occupancy on weekends with home SEC football games is nearly 100% and hotels raise their rates by 100% to 200% on those weekends.”
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