Figure 1. AS Photography. Pexels
Thousands of attendees flock to Liverpool Comic Con every year. This event has a huge economic impact to the area because it supports all types of pop culture activities and its organizers and attendees require spaces that encompasses ACC Liverpool and surrounding venues. What does economic impact mean? It is any event that refers to the total amount of additional expenditure generated within a defined area. Also referred to as ‘new injected expenditure’ and it is revenue that would not have happened in the host region had the event not taken place (Dwyer and Jago, 2020). In fact, this particular Comic Con contributed £15 million to the local economy since it drew in visitors from all around the world into its neighboring hotels, shops, and restaurants.
Comic Con has gone global so this requires strong consideration of social, economic, and environmental interests and not just profit. A fair way to look at this is through the use of the Triple Bottom Line from Elkington (1997) which allows people to assess the value of these large events.
Triple Bottom Line
Do all stakeholders place equal importance on just profit? My feeling is ‘no’, especially after reading the theory behind Elkington’s 3 key points from the TBL: People, Planet, and Profits. As a regular attendee of Comic Con, who feels a sense of community, there are huge efforts being made to benefit the other two points. Why? Focusing on sustainability can give it a positive reputation. It can even motivate attendees and organizers to care about how their activities affect the planet. The event itself can foster new products and services and increase profit sharing for everyone. I believe businesses or communities find the TBL attractive because of companies that operate under this guiding principle:
Figure 2. Catabas. Created in PowerPoint from Elkington’s TBL Principle. 2025
The “Planet” principle in the TBL really resonates with me because of its focus on the environment and sustainability. I read an article from B Lab Global that discusses a collective movement to make B Corporations more impactful in enacting positive climate action. This is in response to the business sector being uniquely culpable for our planet’s climate emergency as they are the primary emitter of greenhouse gases. I feel more hopeful learning that businesses are becoming forces of good in climate action. Because the TBL is really a remarkable framework for tying together economic impact with social and environmental impact, it has become a guiding principle that Getz (2009) wants to institutionalize.
Event Impact ToolKit
This week, I learned how to use the toolkit from a company called, eventIMPACTS,(2022) because it provides guidance on good practice principles for evaluating or calculating attendance, social, economic, environmental, and media related impacts for staging events. I tried running my own raw data for a hypothetical event for an imaginary Sci-Fi event to gain an understanding of how the numbers are calculated. Based on its methodology, it appears my make-believe out-of-towners injected a fair amount of money into the local economy which is beneficial to hotels and restaurants. Since locals would also be attending, I can assume that their spending habits were not as impressive as the out-of-towners. I’m personally motivated by the calculator feature to help me estimate the worth, value, and direct economic impact to host cities for my future events.
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. AS Photography. Pexels
Figure 2. Catabas. Created in PowerPoint from Elkington’s TBL Principle. 2025
REFERENCES
B Lab Global. Collective Action: Developing Local, Regional, and Global Communities for change. [online]. Available at: https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/programs-and-tools/collective-action/
DWYER, Larry, & Jago, Leo (2020). The Economic Contribution of Special Events. In Page, Stephen & Connell, Joanne (Eds), The Routledge Handbook of Events (2nd ed., pp 632). Routledge.
ELKINGTON, John. (1997). Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business. New Society Publishers
EVENT IMPACTS. 2022. Economic Impact Calculator. EventIMPACTS [online]. Available at: http://eventIMPACT.com
GETZ, Donald. 2009. “Policy for sustainable and responsible festivals and events: institutionalization of a new paradigm.” Journal of policy research in tourism, leisure and events, 1 (1), 61-78.