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Introduction
Sports tourism is a dynamic, rapidly growing global market sector (Mason et al., 2019; Abdel, 2017). As Herstein and Jaffe (2008), Williams (2003) and Abdel (2017) explain, the demand for sports tourism has increased due to a greater awareness of public health, as well as a rise in sporting event organization. Trips to attend sporting events as a spectator or participant represent one of the activities that define sports tourism (Latiesa and Paniza, 2006). Specifically, most of the research related to sporting events and their touristic and economic impact focuses on mega events (Agha and Taks, 2015; Malchrowicz-Mósko and Póczta, 2018; Kwiatkowski and Oklevik, 2017). However, the dynamics of sporting event studies in science is changing. Although large events continue to arouse the interest of analysts, events of small and medium-sized have emerged as an interesting option for study and analysis (Carvalho et al., 2018).
Several authors support the benefits of organizing small-sized events for host cities. In the first place, they generate a positive social-economic impact on local development (Taks et al., 2011, 2013; Gibson et al., 2012; Salgado et al., 2020). Specifically, Matheson (2006) explains that the results of small-sized event impact studies may be closer to reality. The reason centers on the reduction of certain measurement problems present in mega events, such as the crowding-out effect; high organization, security and infrastructure costs; and inappropriate use of multipliers, among others.
Different works study the economic impact created by small-sized events. Wilson (2006) studies the impact of swimming events at the local level. Veltri et al. (2009) studies the economic impact of hosting a medium-sized hockey event in Fort Collins, Colorado. Other studies demonstrating the positive economic impact of this type of events include those performed by Taks et al. (2015) for the 2005 Junior Pan American Games, Barajas et al. (2016) relative to the Ourense Rally, Salgado et al. (2018) for the Spanish Senior Swimming Championship, and the study by Carvalho et al. (2018) concerns the 11th Douro Half Marathon in Portugal.
Other studies analyze different aspects within the economic sphere in addition to the economic impact. An example is found in the work of Agha (2013), which studies minor league baseball teams in 238 metropolitan areas...