Tour de France will not be a goldmine for Danish hosts
When the French Tour de France caravan hits the Danish summer landscape in the beginning of July 2022, the host municipalities should not expect a big financial gain.
A new study from the Department of Sociology, Environmental and Business Economics and the Danish Institute for Sport Studies has examined the economic effects of hosting Tour de France stages. The results show that the Danish Tour de France hosts should not expect to see any effects on the overall economy or on the employment situation.
Our PhD student Christian Gjersing Nielsen was involved in the study, and according to him it supports existing research in the field: that hosting major sporting events typically does not translate into economic gains for the host cities.
"Therefore, any public support should be based more on other arguments than the 'hard' economic ones. Instead, the focus should be on valuing the benefits that a major sports event can be expected to bring to the population, for example in terms of enjoyment, social cohesion, collective memory, identity and prestige," he says.
Christian Gjersing Nielsen conducted the study together with Rasmus K. Storm, Mette Eske and Andreas Nygaard from the Danish Institute for Sport Studies.
Read the study here