Economic impact of Ryder Cup on Long Island

The Ryder Cup will make a $160 million impact on Long Island’s economy this year, according to new estimates.

Prepared by business group Long Island Association and released Monday, the estimates draw on attendance and impact figures from previous golf events and information from the Professional Golfers’ Association of America and regional travel and leisure industry. They project that the weeklong event will create about 1,000 part-time and full-time jobs and draw 250,000 fans, including up to 175,000 visitors from around the world and other parts of the United States.

“This is going to be one of the most impactful sporting events to take place on Long Island,” said Matt Cohen, LI Association CEO. “Long Island will be the epicenter” of the sporting world for the duration of the competition, Cohen said. “We will show off the best Long Island has to offer, and there’s a value on that you can’t quantify.”

The Ryder Cup, which pits golfers from Europe and the United States against each other every two years, will be played at Bethpage State Park’s Black Course. Tournament organizers will pay a $5 million site fee to the state, according to the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

WHAT NEWSDAY FOUNDThe Ryder Cup golf tournament could spur $160 million in economic activity on Long Island, according to a new analysis by business group Long Island Association.LI Association officials and business leaders said the competition could also have long-term benefits, raising Long Island’s profile as a sports and tourism destination.One sports economist said that factors like declining U.S. tourism could mean the actual returns for the local economy are lower than projected.

Bethpage’s Black, Yellow and Green courses closed to public play Aug. 18; the Red and Blue courses closed Sept. 8. Parks officials hope to reopen Bethpage one to two weeks after the Ryder Cup finishes, said a spokesman for the state office, John Craig.

The impact estimate includes $100 million in visitor spending and about $30 million each in indirect impact as local businesses buy products and services from each other to accommodate business generated by the tournament and household spending as workers spend their wages locally. The statewide impact is projected to reach $200 million, though one sports economist said estimates could be based on overly optimistic assumptions.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and PGA of America announced last week that the Bethpage Black Course would also host the 2028 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and the 2033 PGA Championship.

The Ryder Cup, like the 2024 Cricket World Cup, which brought about two weeks of matches to a temporary stadium in Nassau County’s Eisenhower Park, draws an international following. For economists, the number of fans expected to visit from outside the area is key because visiting fans inject money into a local economy that wouldn’t be spent here otherwise, and they typically spend more money than local fans.

“Having outside people come in, these are people that would not normally be on Long Island, so that’s extra spending that benefits our people,” said Steven Kent, the Association’s chief economist.

But Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, who studies the business of sports, said a full accounting of the event’s impact would have to factor in public costs, such as traffic enforcement by police on area roads. Zimbalist also said that, after months of falling United States tourism numbers, international attendance could be lower than the LI Association projected.

In August, travel research firm Tourism Economics said that overseas and Canadian visits to the United States were trending “well below previously forecast levels,” driven by geopolitical and policy-related concerns. For July, according to the firm, overseas arrivals dropped 3.1% year-over-year, led by decreases from Western Europe and Asia. Canadian visits were down by 37% over the same period.

“I do think there will be some positive impact, whether it’s $160 million, which I would doubt very much, or some other number,” Zimbalist said. “My guess is that the real number is well less than half” of the LI Association projection. 

Between 65% and 70% of Ryder attendees are expected to be visitors from either the rest of the United States or outside the country, according to the LI Association. The group projects that each visitor will spend $565 daily in categories like catering and lodging. According to the Association, all 16 hotels within a 25-mile radius of Bethpage were all nearly sold out, with remaining rooms priced at $900 to $1,000 nightly. “Very few” Airbnb properties were available in the area, “except for a three-bedroom home priced at $36,000 for a six-night stay.”

Attendance for this year’s Ryder Cup is expected to top numbers for recent Ryder Cups and PGA Championships held in the United States. But LI Association’s projections don’t match estimates for the 2023 Ryder Cup in Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in Rome, which drew 271,000 fans and generated an estimated €262 million, or $308 million in today’s dollars, for the Italian economy, according to Ryder Cup organizers. That sum was a record for a Ryder Cup held in Europe.

Not that Long Island business leaders were complaining. Thomas Gouldsbury, president of the Long Island Limousine Association and owner of Azure Limousine and Transportation in St. James, said earlier this month that much of his industry’s capacity had been snapped up. “This is a big plus for our industry out here on the Island,” he said. “What they’re doing is scheduling buses, vans, sprinter vans. We’ve got groups that are going to be moving, say, a corporate event, 14, 36 passengers at a clip. It’s all shuttling work, getting them from the parking lots to the Cup.”

Dorothy Roberts, president of the Long Island Hospitality Association, said her industry had already benefited more than it had with the cricket World Cup or previous golf events. Some hotels were fully booked as early as a year ago, some through “buyouts” of all their rooms by the PGA or television networks, she said. “Most of the terms were minimum stay of five nights,” with payment taken in advance, she said. “Compression,” with near-full occupancy pushing up prices, is strongest near Bethpage, but its effects can be observed as far west as New York City and deep into eastern Suffolk County, she said.

Roberts, like Cohen, said she saw the Ryder Cup as more than a one-time bonanza. “It helps in the future for tourism as well,” she said, perhaps converting first-time visitors into long-term customers. “It’s a way for us to showcase Long Island, show them that we have all these beautiful parks, towns and villages. Besides the golf course, there’s a lot of other things to do here.”

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.