The economic impact of sports in the Quad Cities

DAVENPORT, Iowa (KWQC) – From youth level to the professional ranks, championship season is seemingly nonstop across the Quad Cities Area.

“Looking at about a year, for us, we are bidding on and hosting over 200 sporting events,” said Joan Kranovich, president of business growth and director for Sports QC.

Each event is carefully considered by the group Sports Qc, a division of Visit Quad Cities tasked with attracting, hosting, and facilitating sporting events, tourism, and opportunities for the region.

A lot of times we do plan three to five years out for hosting a championship,” Kranovich said. “We’ll take it through our ‘Event Impact Calculator.’ It’s an industry standard calculator that gives us some of the criteria of how many hotel rooms are they going to affect, [and the] direct economic impact. When we are looking at that, we take the next step of, ‘Okay, this could be a really good fit.’”

While the John Deere Classic and Missouri Valley Conference Women’s Basketball Tournament have become mainstays in the Quad Cities, Kranovich said much of the focus is bringing in new events.

“It’s probably about 40 to 50 percent of our business,” Kranovich said. “We work with a lot of those first-time events and then hopefully they’re second, third, fourth, or fifth year here they really have their footing and know what they are doing, hopefully growing, and then reaching out to us.”

With many sports fans flocking to the Quad Cities, local businesses, including hotels, have a chance to score as well.

“The weekends are sold out. We are busy basically every weekend of the year, and sports are what continues to drive our weekend business,” said Ashlei Shepherd, general manager of the Cambria Hotel in Bettendorf.

“[Per] usual, for our group business, $30 million of direct economic business comes into the Quad Cities,” Kranovich said. “Professional sporting events aren’t in that. So what the River Bandits do, what the Storm does, what the Steamwheelers do for the market in sports is not even included in that.”

Kranovich said the potential economic impact of hosting championships doesn’t end when the final buzzer sounds.

“We hope that there is something that [athletes and specators] are like, ‘Wow, you guys went above and beyond, or this community was so nice,” Kranovich said. “They feel like it is somewhere that they can think of later.”

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