Five months + 425 pigs = $59.4 million.

        That's the estimated spending by some 462,000 out-of-towners who attended Greater Cincinnati's Big Pig Gig last year, according to a University of Cincinnati study of the event's economic impact.

        Gig gawkers spent $59.4 million in area stores, restaurants, hotels and gas stations — not a bad return on the $1.2 million direct cost of the event, organizers said.

        During the gig's five-month run, 968,000 people toured the fiberglass pigs, with 462,000 — 48 percent — coming from out of town, the study said.

        The study estimates a total economic impact of $122 million, but that includes many secondary effects of spending that stretch the imagination. It postulates, for instance, a $1.8 million benefit to the insurance industry, and a $12,669 impact for metal mining.

        “We're casting the people's choice (pig) in metal” to be displayed at the riverfront Banks development, joked gig co-chairman Joe Hale.

        UC economist George Vredeveld, author of the study, said in many ways the study draws conservative estimates of the gig's impact. First, the study did not try to estimate spending by area residents who attended the gig.

        The study tried to include only out-of-towners who said their primary reason for coming to Cincinnati was to see the gig, and did not include those who happened to be in town and took some time to view the pigs.

        The estimates of attendance and spending were derived from two polls by UC's Institute for Policy Research. One was a man-in-the-street “intercept” poll in October of 136 out-of-towners who said they came to Cincinnati to see the pigs. The other was a random-sample survey of Greater Cincinnati households, done after the gig, in December.

        Answers to questions such as “are you staying in a hotel?” were married to visitor spending data from the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau, and data from a computer model of the economy.

        The study concluded that out-of-towners stayed an average of three days in Cincinnati, and spent $130 per person. “The important thing to recognize is that this obviously is a significant event that brought people to town,” Mr. Vredeveld said.

        “The numbers I looked at were the dollars and the people,” said Mr. Hale, who is also president of the Cinergy Foundation. From his conversations with retailers and restaurateurs, he said he already knew the gig was generating more traffic and spending for them.

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