Gratton, Chris
- Chris Gratton BA(Econ), MA(Econ), PhD is Professor of Sport Economics and Director of the Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC) at Sheffield Hallam University. He is a specialist in the economic analysis of the sport market. He is co-author (with Peter Taylor) of six books specifically on the sport and leisure industry, and together they have published over 100 articles in academic and professional journals. Their first book, ‘Sport and Recreation: An Economic Analysis’ was generally regarded as one of the leading texts in the economics of sport. It has been completely rewritten and was published as: ‘The Economics of Sport and Recreation’ in August 2000.
Over recent years, SIRC has developed a specific expertise in the analysis and evaluation of the staging of major events. Since 1996, SIRC has carried out a series of studies of major sports events, including EURO 96, the World Masters Swimming Championships, the World Badminton Championships, the European Short Course Swimming Championships, the European Show jumping Championships, the World Judo Championships, the World Indoor Climbing Championships, the London Marathon, the World Amateur Boxing Championships, World Half-Marathon Championships, and Wimbledon. Although the focus of most of these studies has been the economic impact of the events, the most recent have included a broadening of the evaluation criteria to incorporate value for money indicators and public profile indicators (through analysis of media coverage).
SIRC has also become the main centre for producing analyses of the economic importance of sport in the UK. Following a contract for the Sports Council in 1996 to review the methodology for analysing the importance of the sports economy, SIRC developed a computer model of the sports sector. This was used to produce estimates of the economic importance of sport for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as for the UK using data for 1995. Recently, these have all recently been updated using the latest data. In addition since 2005, SIRC has been set up by Sport England as a Collaborating Centre for Sport and the Economy. As part of this arrangement SIRC produces annually estimates of the economic importance of sport for England as a whole and for each of its nine regions.
