IS HOSTING WORTH IT? A GEOBIGDATA-BASED COST-BENEFIT ASSESSMENT OF THE 2025 UEFA SUPER CUP IN UDINE, ITALY

This paper assesses whether hosting a high-cost international sporting event can be justified from a regional public-policy perspective. The case study is the 2025 UEFA Super Cup held in Udine, in the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, Italy. In this paper, highcost hostings refer to events for which a public authority contributes substantial financial and organisational resources in order to attract the event and its associated visitors. To support the Region in deciding whether comparable future hostings are worthwhile, we combine TELCO mobile analytics, aggregated Mastercard card transactions and digital reputation indicators to assess the 13 August 2025 match. TELCO data estimate 24,137 unique stadium attendees, 57.4% of whom were foreigners. Overnight tourism was substantial, with 9,335 foreign tourists sleeping in Friuli Venezia Giulia and 17,188 foreign tourist nights, corresponding to an average stay of 1.84 nights. However, the analysis also shows relevant leakage towards other Italian regions, especially Veneto, and strong market and sector heterogeneity in spending behaviour. The paper therefore proposes an ROI-oriented workflow centred on three policy questions: how many visitors were activated, how many nights and transactions were retained in the funding region, and which part of the observed expenditure can plausibly be considered incremental rather than merely displaced or substituted.