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Director of Athletics Shane Lyons has had the question thrown at him a bunch over the years but didn’t know how to quantify an answer for it.

Now he does.

“What’s the impact of West Virginia athletics to the state? What’s the impact to Monongalia County?”

Well, according to economic impact research by Tripp Umbach that was commissioned in the fall of 2017 through the remainder of that academic year those numbers are quite significant to the Mountain State.

The overall economic impact to the state is $302.7 million across the 18 sports at the university with the influence of football being a total of $223.5 of that total. The impact from the men’s basketball program was $35.5 million and other Olympic sports fell in at $25.8 million for the state.

The impact to Mon County was $78.8 million. None of those totals include any impact with television.

The research discovered that the athletic programs impacted business volume in three different ways.

One was the direct expenditures for goods and services by West Virginia University, two is the indirect spending within Mon County and the state and finally induced spending by households either directly or employed by athletics or the state businesses providing the services.

Tripp Umbach collected data over the course of that academic year collecting over 600 surveys at six sporting events over the 2017 season with the conclusion that West Virginia athletics are “in a healthy place and is trending in a positive direction.”

The study also concluded that the athletics at West Virginia were vital to the local economy and culture of the region and moving to the Big 12 Conference was the right decision when the Mountaineers made the move in 2012 from the Big East.

Tripp Umbach is one of the national leaders in economic impact research and has conducted similar studies at schools such as Tennessee, Penn State and Washington, among others.

The numbers fell in line with what Lyons believed to be the case but he can now put direct figures when it comes to decisions over whether to schedule an additional home game or look for neutral site locations for football games in the future.

“We have a better understanding of what we mean to the state and the county,” Lyons said.

To see the full study: https://westvirginia.forums.rivals.com/threads/economic-impact-and-community-benefits-of-wvu-athletics-on-the-state-of-west-virginia-and-mon-county.205511/

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