More Than Just a Game? Soccer Tournaments and Firm Sentiment

This paper provides the first systematic firm-level analysis of how major international football tournaments affect business sentiment. We combine 2.2 million responses from the ifo Business Survey with information on 17 FIFA World Cups and UEFA European Championships between 1991 and 2024 and estimate event-study models around each tournament. Our results reveal a pronounced asymmetry: firms' assessments of their current business situation barely respond to tournaments, whereas the probability of reporting better business expectations rises by around six percentage points two months before a tournament starts, remaining elevated well into the post-tournament period. The anticipation effect is strongest in manufacturing, while trade is the only sector in which the current situation also improves, consistent with tangible tournament-related demand. The European Championship, played on the continent, lifts both sentiment dimensions, whereas the World Cup operates almost exclusively through expectations. Comparing the 2006 World Cup (hosted), the 2014 World Cup (won), and the EURO2024 (hosted), we find that strong public engagement and a supportive macroeconomic environment, rather than hosting status, drive the sentiment response. A placebo test and an alternative dummy assignment based on exact survey participation dates support the interpretation that the documented effects are genuinely tied to the tournaments rather than to seasonal or cyclical patterns.