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Manchester football drives local economy

Football has boosted Greater Manchester’s economy, after a series of key matches at the start of the year increased the city’s visitor numbers.

Hotel occupancy reached its highest levels of between 93% and 99% on match days in comparison with non-match days in January 2013.

The Manchester Monitor, published by think tank New Economy, showed that league and cup matches played by Manchester United and Bolton Wanderers produced the highest levels of hotel bookings across the month.

New Economy also predicted that April’s football business conference in Manchester, the European Soccerex Forum, will attract over 20,000 delegates.

A predicted excess of £20m will also be generated for the local economy by a four-year deal to host the Soccerex Global Convention from 2014.

Baran Frankal, director of economic strategy at New Economy, said: “This month sees a particularly strong correlation to football, which so clearly has a massive effect in bringing people here.

“However, we can’t rely on the impact of match days alone, which is why it is fantastic the analysis evidences the positive impact of the beautiful game in other areas such as business tourism.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .