Evaluating local government costs and revenues: The case of an Italian privately owned for-profit event

•In case of privately owned for-profit events, questions of legitimacy may arise.•The ability to quantify public spending on an event is useful.•A method is proposed to measure additional public costs and revenues.•The method is tested on a privately owned Italian hallmark event.•The net public expenditure can be different from what is assumed by public opinion.

In recent years, events have increasingly been used as a powerful marketing tool, in order to attract tourists. The aim of this paper is to present an accurate and generalizable method with which to classify and quantify the additional costs and revenues accrued by local government as a direct consequence of hosting a special event. This is of particular interest when applied to the case of privately owned and profit oriented events, as local stakeholders may question their legitimacy. The proposed method will be tested on one of the best known privately owned hallmark events in Italy: the Eurochocolate festival, held every year in Perugia. The analysis demonstrates that the commonly held public opinion which supposes that this event generates high public spending is unfounded, and suggests the suitability of implementing such an analysis in cases where a debate exists regarding the legitimacy of a privately owned event.