Any information can be placed in the sidebar to help your website visitors navigate your site.Emerald Coast Dirt & Vert ~ Mission
‘Emerald Coast Dirt & Vert strives to represent and progress the sports in which we participate with passion and serve the athletes that utilize our facility with dedication. We are also firmly committed to providing our community outstanding public benefit and tangible economic impact.’
Sounds nice, Huh?
You know we’re crazy about BMX, Skating and Blading – There’s the Passion. You also know that we are always working as hard as possible to maintain and improve the facility, often on a shoestring budget – There’s the Dedication. You also know that we promote a safe and family oriented place for our local kids and their families to spend time enjoying the sports they love – There’s the Public Benefit, but ‘Tangible Economic Impact’ from a BMX track and skakepark, really? Yes, Really!
Let’s do some conservative math… In early March of 2011 we hosted the Sunshine State BMX Association qualifying races three and four right here in Fort Walton Beach. This three-day event drew competitors from multiple states and Florida residents from as far away as Homestead. There were over 360 registered racers and their families that drove here, stayed here, ate here and most likely fueled up the car before heading home.
So let’s make some base line assumptions in an effort to determine the economic impact of an event like this.
- 365 Registered Racers – Although some dads, and yes, even some moms race also, let us assume that half of those registered for the race weekend had an additional family member with them – a very, very low estimate when a majority of the racers are under 18 years of age.
- So now we have an estimated total attendance of anywhere between 550 people to over 700, but lets use the smaller number.
- In an effort to be conservative and accurate lets drop the number by 10% to account for local racers and local fans.
- If the average family in the United States (according to the 2010 census) is a bit over 3 members lets cut our attendance number into thirds to estimate the number of families in town for the race. The low-ball number here is 164.
- Each family would need to spend two nights in a hotel and if we use an average daily rate for lodging of $100 then we are looking at nearly $33,000 in lodging revenue alone.
- The event started on Friday afternoon and ended early Sunday afternoon. Lets conservatively assume each family had dinner Friday night, breakfast and dinner on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday. Lets also assume a dinner for three costs $55 and a breakfast costs $25. Add an additional $26,280 in food and beverage impact.
- The nearest ‘home track’ for folks coming from out of town is 4.5 to 5 hours away. If we assume that folks filled up the SUV before heading home at an average tank of $65 then you can go ahead and add nearly $11,000 in impact to local fuel and service stations.
- So a conservative estimate for total economic impact would be a total of nearly $70,000 to the local economy with nearly $5,000 raised in sales tax and nearly $2,000 raised in bed taxes for the TDC. Considering the conservative nature of our assumptions the high end of the impact might have been well over $100,000 in a non-peak ‘shoulder-season’ time for our local area.
- Emerald Coast Dirt & Vert held a similar event in November in 2010 and normally will hold two to three events of this caliber each year.
- So to answer the question... Tangible Economic Impact? You bet! If we host two to three events of this nature each year the impact is anywhere from $140,000 to $350,000 in non-peak 'shoulder-season' times.
Sunshine State BMX Association - State Qualifying Race 3 & 4 - March - 2011 |
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Lodging | Food & Beverage Assumptions |
Lodging | Food & Beverage Cost Assumptions |
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Revenue Generation |
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