MUNICH (Germany) - The financial impact of FIBA EuroBasket 2025 that was hosted in four cities - Katowice, Limassol, Tampere and Riga - exceeded that of the 2022 edition and has set a new standard for the competition.
This is just one of several successful outcomes that the four hosts extracted from the flagship event that took place from August 27 through September 14, according to a Host City Impact Study conducted by the renowned Nielsen Sports, in conjunction with FIBA.
The study calculated the overall monetary impact rose to €283.6 million after adding up the economic, media and social impact and subtracting the environmental impact. The increase from €270 million in EuroBasket 2022 is significant, considering that edition was hosted in five cities (Berlin, Cologne, Milano, Prague and Tbilisi) with a much larger cumulative population.
The economic impact was the biggest positive outcome for the hosts, amounting to €218.9 million. More than one fourth of that figure, €58.4 million, was the direct economic benefit from the expenditure of fans and spectators, organizers and accredited attendees, while the remainder was the sum of indirect and induced effects.
A more detailed look at the sources of the economic impact reveals there was a clear injection of revenue into the host cities, as more than one third of the 445,909 total visitors came from outside the host countries.
Riga, which hosted the most EuroBasket 2025 games as it provided the stage of one group as well as the Final Phase, extracted the largest share of this economic impact, amounting to €120.6 million. Tampere followed with €55.4 million, Limassol’s share was €25.9 million and Katowice’s was €17 million.
Interestingly, when surveyed about their impressions, 90 percent of foreign visitors replied they would recommend visiting the host city to their friends, while 89 percent said they were likely to return themselves for another visit in the future.
The second biggest positive outcome was Media Value, including TV broadcast, online and social media coverage, which increased by 61 percent compared to the previous edition, to reach €63.1 million.
This huge increase was the result of cumulative audiences more than doubling to 647 million (from 303 million in 2022) with the largest shares in Germany, Poland and Greece, while social media impressions skyrocketed to 164 million, from 99 million.
The third positive factor, the social impact, was calculated at €2.1 million mainly through increased levels of physical activity and upskilling of volunteers.
Tampere was the biggest beneficiary in this aspect, extracting the largest share among all hosts in both social city value (€613,000) and increased human capital (€204,000).
The Nielsen Sports methodology included primary research data collected through on-site surveys, cross-media monitoring and evaluation, as well as additional expertise and knowledge from over 150 Host City Impact studies that were successfully carried out by the company in the past.
In addition, any existing Host City research and FIBA internal data were analyzed and matched with Nielsen Sports’ research approach. In that sense, all relevant Host City Impact levels, i.e., economic, media, social, and environmental, were analyzed based on this data set.
The full FIBA EuroBasket 2025 Host Impact Study can be downloaded here in PDF format.
FIBA