This paper examines the relationship between hosting mega-events such as the Super Bowl, Olympics, and World Cup and rental housing prices in host cities. If mega-events are amenities for local residents, then rental housing prices can serve as a proxy for estimating residents’ willingness to pay for these amenities. An analysis of rental prices in a panel of American cities from 1993 to 2005 fails to find a consistent impact of mega-events on rental prices. When controls are placed on the regression models to account for nationwide annual fluctuations in rental prices, mega-events generally exhibit little impact on rental prices in cities as a whole and are as likely to reduce rental prices as increase them. On the other hand, Somewhat stronger evidence exists, however, that mega-events tend to affect rental prices outside of the center city in a fundamentally different manner than in the city core. Atlanta experienced lower rental prices in the central city compared the suburbs both before and after the 1996 Summer Olympics while Salt Lake City witnessed an increase in rental prices in its central city compared to its suburbs before and after the 2002 Winter Olympics.
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