A standardised approach to economic activation.
Reputation League develops analytical frameworks to measure how sport activates the real economy.
The methodology converts sporting activity into standardised economic activation indicators that can be compared across events, clubs, players, cities, competitions and periods.
The focus is on identifiable economic activity associated with participation in sport — not on club revenues, asset values or broad macroeconomic multipliers.
In short
- Real economy activation measures the accommodation, hospitality, transport and retail activity generated by a fixture in its host city.
- Ordinary resident expenditure is excluded and no economic multipliers are applied: every figure is a conservative floor estimate.
- One deterministic framework applies to every fixture, ensuring comparability across competitions, clubs, host cities and seasons.
- Each fixture’s activation is attributed to the participating teams, and results are checked against external tourism benchmarks.
The technical detail follows. Full technical documentation is available to institutions on request at signal@reputationleague.com.
What we measure
Economic activation is assessed across three dimensions of the real economy, following a fixed indicator architecture. Only the first dimension forms the activation value published on the platform; the others are reported alongside it and never added to it, to avoid double counting.
Local consumption
Accommodation, hospitality services, transport and retail activity generated by the fixture.
External demand
Visiting and international supporters, overnight stays, visitor expenditure and air traffic.
Economic exposure
Business exposure, district activity and SME exposure around the venue.
Calculation
Every fixture is sized bottom-up, from its real attendance and the economics of its host city, then attributed to the participating teams.
Club-Attributed Football Economic Activation — the share of a fixture’s activation attributed to the subject club. A club’s period total is the sum of its CAFEA across every competition, home, away and at neutral venues.
= accommodation + hospitality + transport + retail
accommodation
= overnight visitors × hotel rate (ADR) × event premium × nights
CAFEA = whole-event activation × club attribution share
The visitor structure — travelling supporters, overnight stays, international visitors — is derived from attendance with coefficients set by competition and stage. Accommodation is localised through the host city’s hotel rate; the other sectors through a local price factor, so cost of living is never counted twice.
Estimates are conservative lower bounds, with no multipliers. A match played behind closed doors has no crowd-driven activation and is recorded at €0, clearly labelled.
Attribution
Reputation League measures the contribution attributable to a defined subject. The Football Economic Activation Framework distinguishes three territorial modes, decided by geography, not by the stage of the competition: a match is neutral only when the venue lies outside the home territory of both teams.
Home
Activation generated within the club’s home metropolitan area — or, for a national team, its own country. A host nation playing at home is Home.
Away
Activation generated in the opponent’s territory through travelling supporters and visitor demand.
Neutral
Activation generated in a third host city — finals, relocated matches, tournaments — classified by neutral code N1–N6.
Data and estimation
The methodology combines official data, established statistical sources and structured estimation where directly observed information is unavailable.
Each estimate follows predefined methodological rules and source hierarchies.
Where more than one defensible assumption is available, Reputation League applies the more conservative value.
Every input is flagged as sourced or modelled — for example, stadium capacity used when an official attendance is missing — and each assessment carries a confidence grade.
Figures are published by period: seasons (July–June) for leagues, national cups and European club competitions; calendar years for tournaments such as the World Cup. The two are never added together.
- 01Official attendance and venueStadium capacity as a flagged proxy only when needed
- 02Competition, stage and match typeCoefficient sets by competition tier and round
- 03Host-city hotel rates (ADR)Sourced annual medians, or conservative tier baselines
- 04Local price factorLocalises hospitality, transport and retail
- 05Supporter mobility estimatesAway allocation and travelling-support profile
- 06Club and national-team profilesUsed for attribution at neutral venues
- 07Standardised economic coefficientsPer-visitor spend, identical for every competition
Consistency and validation
Before publication, every assessment passes internal consistency checks.
- Deterministic engine — the same inputs always return the same result; no figure is entered by hand.
- Attribution symmetry — team shares and the event residual add up to the whole-event total.
- Coherent visitor structure — visitor volumes, overnight stays, accommodation spend and transport activity are derived from one another.
- One identity per team — every club and national team has a single registry ID across competitions.
- Re-runnable — a corrected input re-computes the fixture in place, never duplicating it.
Economic activation, not economic impact
Reputation League distinguishes economic activation from traditional economic impact analysis.
Economic impact
Traditional impact studies may assign broad economic effects to an event and may incorporate wider regional multiplier effects.
Economic activation
Reputation League does not assign the entire economic value of an event to a single participant and does not rely on broad regional multipliers.
The frameworks identify the economic activity associated with a specific sporting entity and attribute it consistently within a defined territory and period.
Frameworks
Football Economic Activation Framework
Economic activation generated by football clubs and national teams across home, away and neutral fixtures.
Player Economic Activation Framework
Economic activation attributed to individual football players.
Additional sport-specific frameworks apply the same underlying principles of standardisation, attribution and comparability.
Coverage
More than 24,000 fixtures assessed with one framework, from season 2016–17 to date. Assessments are added after every matchday.
- UEFA club competitions: UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Conference League.
- Domestic leagues: Premier League, LaLiga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1.
- Domestic cups: FA Cup, Copa del Rey, Coppa Italia, DFB-Pokal, Coupe de France.
- National teams: FIFA World Cup, UEFA EURO, Copa América, UEFA Nations League.
How to cite
Every figure can be cited with its source, framework version and the date of the data.
Reputation League, [club, host city or fixture]: real economy activation, [season]. Football Economic Activation Framework (FEAF v3), data as of [date]. reputationleague.com
The current engine is FEAF v3.6 (Nov. 4, 2026). Every change to the method is recorded on the press page. Every match page provides a ready-to-use citation. For data requests and institutional use: signal@reputationleague.com.
Defined attribution.
Comparable economic activation data.
Economic activation values are standardised analytical estimates produced with FEAF. They are not audited financial information or official economic-impact assessments.
Reputation League · Methodology