Willingness to Pay for Professional Road Cycling Events

Large-scale professional road cycling events are almost always free to access for spectators, but also lead to substantial costs for the organizers. Often they are partly funded by local, regional, or national governments. These events have many benefits, some of which are intangible, such as the pleasure and pride for event visitors or local residents. This chapter looks at the value of the intangible benefits associated with large-scale cycling events. Only four relevant studies were found for a cycling event setting, with analyses for the Ronde van Vlaanderen, the so-called big starts of the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia, and the UCI Road Cycling World Championships. To estimate the value, all studies used the contingent valuation method (CVM) by asking residents or visitors about their willingness to pay (WTP) for the event. Although the studies substantially differ in aim and setup, all had outcomes with a significantly positive WTP. WTP seems to be higher for users (e.g., visitors of the event) than for non-users, although cycling events also have a substantial value for the latter group. In addition, the two studies that surveyed the general public twice, i.e., before and after the event, found that ex post WTP was significantly higher than ex ante WTP, suggesting that we have to be cautious to generalize empirical findings.