It's time for Tavo and Red to clinch the deal with the State of Texas and get it to commit to handing over $250M over the next ten years to pay most of Bernie's rights fee. So they released a "study" that supposedly shows the "direct economic impact" of the race on the Austin economy. However, as an economist quoted in this article points out (and as I've pointed out above), such "studies" are viewed very skeptically by academic economists.
Study projects large economic windfall from F1 race
By Eric Dexheimer
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
A Formula One race in Austin next year would generate just under $288 million in direct economic impact for the area, according to an estimate released Monday by promoters of the race. That spending would produce $26.6 million in new tax revenue for the state, according to the study.
The numbers are crucial to F1 race promoters' efforts to secure $25 million in public incentive payments from a state program designed to lure large, primarily sporting events to Texas for their economic development potential...
The study released Monday was written by Don Hoyte, a former economist for the comptroller's office who now runs a company that produces economic impact studies and advises trust fund applicants on how to secure money through the state program...
...Opponents — among them economists — have responded that studies purporting to calculate tax revenue attributable to individual events are imprecise at best and wildly inaccurate at worst.
"I've read hundreds of these things," Craig Depken, an associate professor of economics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who specializes in measuring the financial impact of large sporting events, told the Statesman last year. "I don't think I've seen one that wouldn't be panned by economists. They are all very rosy projections."