Sports Events provide excellent marketing and business development opportunities all over the world. How your business/place of work benefited by it?

SIR FULLY AGREED.................... I LOVE SPORTS AND ALWAYS SEEKING THE EVENT IN BUSINESS WORLD TO PLAY................... WE WERE HAVING CRICKET TEAM IN PAKISTAN AND USED TO PLAY WITH OUR CUSTOMERS ,,,,,,,,,,,,, IT WAS REALLY FUN ALONG WITH BUSINESS...........

I never had any such interaction with any sports event as i'm working in WWF. but we usually get sports players ENDORSEMENTS. and that's quite beneficial for our company.

Sir I do agree sports events provide exellecnt bussiness oppertunities. But the way the game of Cricket has been commercialized it may not be good for the game any more. India with a huge audiance had the responsiblity to see that the games sanctity is maintained. The problem is we have made too many millionares among ordinarry players. As a result we do not have a place inthe Foot ball world cup or Olympics whare many smaller nations with less economic power like Ghana are much ahead of us.

Good Day!!!

Fully agreed with your statement....... As me & Mr. Zafar belongs to same industry (Pharma) we gets a lot in return from our clients (both immediate business as well as long lasting relationship building).

Cricket is the commonest outdoor game we played during such events ......... In indoor games, i used to play cards games as well.

Well, sports became one of the most favorable businesses in the world. Not only for clubs but also for all companies related to it such as advertising companies, event organizers, sponsors and business of sport products. I advised many  companies with I worked for to grab such opportunities by sponsoring sport teams and events under the motto of social responsibility. One of the companies I did business with accepted to subscribe for some first class seats at one of the football stadiums and invited customers to watch football matches on regular base.

I agree that sports is being used to promote businesses and they are well capitalized by top multinational companies by sponsoring the reputed teams in  every game or conducting the entire tournament. The cost involved to participate in such sporting events worldwide will be very high. Some luxury products company only sponsor high end games like polo or golf or Tennis or yachting because these games are considered to be the games played by the cream of the society. Eg: Rolex. I never had an opportunity to work for such big companies to give you my experience. Hope will get an opportunity in future. 

When you hear that sporting events such as the recent football matches featuring Manchester United and Liverpool provide a boost to the economy, you are best to view such calls as offside.

The past week has seen numerous reports of economic joys via sport. The New South Wales government announced that the Man U-A League All Stars game brought in $16m for the NSW economy. Similar claims for the Victorian economy (around $10m) were made about the Liverpool-Melbourne Victory game played on Wednesday night at the MCG, and also the recent British Lions tour and the upcoming Ashes Test cricket series.

Last week a report in Britain found that the London2012 Olympics boosted the UK economy by around £9.9bn.

But before we get too excited about such figures we really need to remember who gains from such claims.

Those claiming the $16m benefit are the same people who reportedly spent $3m to entice Manchester United to Sydney in the first place.

The $16m figure was reported on the Monday after the Saturday night game. That's a pretty quick count of economic benefit. But it is not a count at all – just an estimation. In fact it is the same $16m that was suggested by the NSW government back in December last year when it announced it "had beaten interstate competitors" to host the event.

So rather than actually being a confirmation of an economic boost all that has happened is the tense has changed from "will deliver" to "delivered". But that doesn't make it any more real.

Never forget that these big sporting teams know they will sell out a stadium, and thus like any smart business they sell themselves to the best price. When a premier boasts of "beating" interstate competitors to get an event, she or he might as well say they won the auction.

And to justify such expense, they need to claim an economic benefit. But mostly they overstate it.

For big-time events such as the Olympics and the World Cup, the problems of estimating economic benefit are even more exaggerated. To determine the benefit you cannot merely count the production and employment that came from spending the money on building a new stadium, the athletes' village and the tickets sold.

Clearly building a stadium (or anything really) will add value to the economy – people will be employed, money will be spent. What you have to consider is whether that benefit is greater than had that money either been spent on something else or not even spent at all.

That is tougher to estimate, and much easier to exaggerate, especially if (as is always done with Olympics) you start talking about "long-term" benefits.

One of the claims regarding the Sydney Olympics made by the NSW government in1997 was that inbound tourism would "be a key feature of the Games and post-Games years, with the number of extra international tourists expected to reach a peak of almost340,000 in2001 before gradually returning over several years, towards the non-Olympics underlying trend".

However, a study in2007 by the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University found that from1997 to2005 only in the financial year2000-01 did foreign demand for tourism in NSW grow faster than in the rest of Australia.

Perhaps with London it will be different. Maybe there were people unaware of London prior to the Games and have since thought about travelling there. I doubt it though.

With smaller one-off events such as the Man U or Liverpool matches the benefits are easier to find – mostly they are in hotel accommodation and perhaps restaurant/takeaway sales.

However, even here we find that the benefits are overestimated.

The Super Bowl in America each year is often said to bring in around $300m to the host city. But one review of economic studies on the event found that at best around $30m in benefit could be attributed to hosting it. It concluded that "hosting the Super Bowl also had no effect on real per capita income in the host metropolitan area".

So is spending money on sporting events a bad thing? Well it depends what you think governments should spend their money on.

Clearly spending vast sums of money on a World Cup or Olympics is harder to justify – especially if, like Brazil, the poverty levels are extreme.

But one-off events like the Man U and Liverpool matches are different.

Yes, you can argue that all spending should be on productive, utilitarian-type measures. But the reality is had the NSW and Victorian governments not stumped up some of the money, the Man U and Liverpool matches would not have happened. And it is abundantly clear from the crowd figures, the singing of "You'll Never Walk Alone and the willingness of TV stations to buy the rights that many people are happy the events took place.

Life is not only about profit and loss. If a government is able to assist in creating enjoyment, whether through sport or an art exhibition or a fireworks display on New Year's Eve then, within reason, I cannot say it shouldn't be done just because the economic benefits are not great.

Sure, government spending should be justified. Does the Victorian government's spending of $57m to host the Formula One grand prix deliver appropriate benefit?

When judging such things, we should take the economic claims with a large helping of salt, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be funded. There is actually more to life than economics.