Recently, Forbes ran a story that suggested that the city of Las Vegas was suddenly flush with new money, largely due to the city hosting Super Bowl LVIII in February. This wasn’t just some big event, this “was on another level” according to this story. Las Vegas saw a $1 billion economic impact from hosting the Super Bowl!
Where did these numbers come from?
“Those consumer actions resulted in $1 billion worth of spending in Las Vegas, according to statistics compiled for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority by Applied Analysis.” – Forbes, 06/03/24
Good lord. Not this group again. For those who don’t know, Applied Analysis is run by a man named Jeremy Aguero. He is not an economist, yet he issues report after report with wild and rather outlandish claims that always benefit the Oakland A’s or the city of Las Vegas.
Why? Because he is a paid consultant for the Oakland A’s while also “serves as staff to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority”. Let me see if I have this straight. While working with the Oakland A’s on getting the move to Las Vegas official, he also provided economic numbers to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority? And nobody saw any issue with this?
But maybe some readers aren’t concerned about his unbelievable conflict of interest issues. Let’s get to his actual past predictions. Months ago, Applied Analysis claimed in a report that the A’s could draw close to 400,000 new visitors to Las Vegas each year. A number of outlets looked into this claim and universally found that the A’s have almost no chance of coming anywhere close to 400,000 yearly. Hell, some doubt they could produce half of that per year.
“The A’s are projecting sellouts for just about every game. Good luck with that…The A’s would be playing in the smallest ballpark in the major leagues, in the smallest media market in the major leagues, in a market where the NFL and NHL already are there and the NBA could follow soon. Of the 30 teams in the major leagues, only 11 announced an attendance of at least 2.5 million last season…The A’s are on pace to lose 127 games this season, which would be the most losses by any MLB team since the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.” – Los Angeles Times, 05/13/23
Or how about when Applied Analysis claimed that the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix provided an economic impact worth $1.5 billion? Thankfully, an actual local economist, Berry College Professor of Economics Frank Stephenson, looked at the numbers and issued his own report debunking the numbers used by Applied Analysis and showing the actual impact to be almost nothing for the public. Stephenson told a news outlet that “despite any real revenue boosts Las Vegas may have witnessed, these gains streamed to the hotel’s corporate owners and failed to stay within city limits”.
Back in 2016-2017, Applied Analysis was going across the state and talking to leaders about how much of an economic boost the construction of the Raiders stadium would be for the area.
‘“The fact that we are spending $1.9 billion to construct a facility is going to put a lot of local construction workers back to work,” said Jeremy Aguero, a principal at Applied Analysis, a research and consulting firm that worked with the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee at the behest of the governor’s Economic Development Office.’ — BusinessPress.Vegas, 2016
Once the stadium was built, only then did people start to realize how little effect the construction jobs had on the economy. Applied Analysis claimed that the construction of the stadium would create 18,700 construction jobs. Not even 1/3 of those were actually created.
“Despite claims from various Las Vegas stakeholders, Allegiant Stadium construction did not spur job growth. After completion of the stadium itself, a report from the contractor revealed that the project created 5,656,218 hours of construction labor. That is only 2,719 full-time equivalent jobs, or approximately 900 in each of the three years of construction, around a quarter of the initial estimate” — Claremont College, 2021, “Dropping the Ball: A Political and Economic Analysis of Public Subsidization for Stadium Construction Projects”.
When some local leaders began to question Applied Analysis of this error, Applied tried to respond by saying that the numbers have “always been explained and understood as the total jobs created during the construction period”. Except, as Nevada Current noted in a story, “some lawmakers don’t remember it that way”.
One of the best places to learn about Las Vegas sports and business news is LVSportsBiz.com. This year, after Applied Analysis issued another insane report claiming that the Las Vegas Raiders produced billions for the city with virtually no evidence, LVSportsBiz decided that they had seen enough. Moving forward, if a report includes any economic impact numbers, it must also include “how the numbers were calculated” or else the site would not include these numbers in any future story.
Looking at other teams in the sports world, it seems everyone is using companies like Applied Analysis to get new sports venues.
“The Milwaukee Brewers, Tennessee Titans, Oakland Athletics, Phoenix Coyotes, Memphis Grizzlies, Tampa Bay Rays, Kansas City Royals and Buffalo Bills are just some of the professional sports teams to make similar claims over the past year, hiring companies such as Victus Advisors, Applied Analysis, Younger and Associates and Convention, Sports and Leisure – owned by Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees venture Legends Hospitality Management – to push public funding for the deals.” — TheCenterSquare.com, 12/3/23
Nevada Current correctly summarized Applied Analysis as a group “aiming to promote subsidies for Las Vegas events and professional sports”.