Brian and Skip have posts linking to articles on the effect of pro sports on post-Katrina reconstruction in New Orleans. The first article, by Steve Wieberg of USA Today focuses mostly on pronouncements that the city is ready to host more major sporting events, but is "puffy", according to Skip who also writes:
The article Brian links to has quite the different tone.
Come to the Crescent City and stroll the French Quarter.
Get
tipsy sipping a Hurricane at Pat O'Brien's. Get powdered sugar on your
nose from a beignet at Café du Monde. Stop en route from one to the
other and pat a carriage-pulling horse wearing a New Orleans Saints
helmet.
Then head down Canal Street and make some new
friends as you play slots or blackjack at Harrah's before heading to
the Superdome for an electric Monday Night Football atmosphere.
New Orleans can still look and feel like that, if that's all you choose to see and feel.
The Titans came on a business trip that didn't include any rides through the Lower Ninth Ward or St. Bernard Parish or Lakeview.
But
to come here for a holiday-like football game and not spread out far
enough to see the residual effect of Hurricane Katrina is a mistake.
Like most sports economists, I'm skeptical that sports are magnets for economic development. Permanent sports, like the NFL, are little more than substitutes for other economic activity. They can provide good feelings and nice diversions when the teams are winning, but the feelings are likely short-lived.
Transitory events like the Final Four and the Super Bowl surely bring people in, but they also crowd others out. With cities like New Orleans nowadays, cities that want more tourism, the mega events bring people in who otherwise wouldn't have come. Yet they do little more than mask deeper underlying problems.