Average ROI of Cultural Institutions v. Sports Venues

Each dot represents a major publicly-funded venue — 50 sports facilities and 48 cultural institutions — plotted by actual build cost against cumulative return on investment through 2025. Cultural institutions return an average of $22.12 per dollar invested; sports venues average $4.97. Hover over any point for details.

A note on transparency: Since this data was compiled and modeled rather than pulled from a single published database, being explicit that it's an analysis rather than a citation of one source is both accurate and credible. Full dataset and sources available on request.
Source: Analysis by Opus Cultura based on published financial reports, economic impact studies, and venue attendance data (2025). ROI calculated as: (Actual Average Annual Revenue × Years in Operation) ÷ Actual Build Cost. All values in USD.Get the dataCreated with Datawrapper