Sports Franchises, Events, and City Livability: An Examination of Spectator Sports and Crime Rates

Abstract

We estimate the impact of sporting events and franchises on local crime rates using the technique developed in Arellano and Bond (2001). For events, we consider the presence of Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Football League and National Hockey League franchises as well as whether a city held one of the respective championships, the Olympics, or World Cup matches. We find little to no evidence that sporting events or franchises are correlated with changes in either property or violent crime with two notable exceptions. The Olympics Games are associated with roughly a 10 per cent increase in property crimes while the Super Bowl is associated with a 2.5 per cent decrease in violent crime. On the whole, however, the presence of spectator sports does not seem to automatically carry with it any improvements in citywide criminal behaviour.