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© Generalitat de Catalunya 2008

The purpose of a model for the economic impact of sport is to determine the wealth generated in a country or region by the development of the activities tied to this sector of the activity. Based on the estimate of the total spending for each of the actors in the system (essentially speaking: sports men and women, enthusiasts, companies and public administrations), the impact of said activity in the GDP can be calculated, and in other macroeconomic aggregates, such as in employment or in the generation of income for the Public Treasury Department. Said estimate could help quantify the sectorial importance of sport in the Autonomous Government of the Basque Country with the goal of dividing potential public policies in this area.

Currently, Euskadi presents a series of parameters with respect to the level of participation in sport activities and with respect to infrastructures that place it in a good position in comparison to other European regions and countries. Some 50% of the population participate in some kind of sport, although not with the same degree of intensity or motivation. For this reason, all that constitutes the Basque System of Sport has been divided into four levels: School Sports, Participative, Performance and High.

This significant role played by sport within Basque society accounts for the fact that this sector, expressed in all its levels and areas, generated for the Autonomous Government of the Basque Country in 2001, a total of 1.9% of its GDP (767,460,935) and contributed to maintaining 2.2% of employment in Euskadi (18,837 jobs). All of this thanks to a demand or total spending of 854,855,651 Euros, to which Public Administrations contributed 6.1% of that figure, recovering- via taxes - a total of 108,058,500 Euros (in other words, for each Euro that Basque public administrations invested in sport, 2.07 Euros were recovered). The public's contribution was greater, in relative terms, in the School Sport level (13.11% of the total spending) and in the Participative level (6.16%) than that made in the High level (0.65%). It should be highlighted that, the levels of School Sport and Participative in particular contributed 51% of the total of the previously cited demand. In both levels, the outlay of sportsmen and women from their own pockets comprised approximately 90% of the total.

The High level captured 23.5% of the demand, while Performance sports captured 17%. The remaining 8.5% of demand is constituted by other concepts not able to be directly classified into one of the four levels.

The sports developed by the actors participating in one or more of the above-described levels, not only constitute a motor for economic development (which is what the model in and of itself attempts to estimate), but they also generate social and cultural values, and as such, constitute an important axis of contribution to social services, in that they transmit educational values related to health and social welfare.