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Comment by giggles_giggles | Hacker News Reader

According to this[1], SXSW brings Austin about $350 million annually. According to Wikipedia, Austin's annual GDP is about $1.5B so 350/1500 = roughly 23% of the city's annual GDP.

Anecdotally I know of many people who work year round to prepare for an event at SXSW and rely on it for their entire annual income.

Cancelling SXSW is a big deal to this city. It hurts. It's not to be downplayed.

[1] https://austin.culturemap.com/news/city-life/09-27-17-econom...

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You're off by a factor of 100. Austin's GDP is ~$150 billion.

That GDP number is way off. 1.5B / 1 million people is 1,500$ per person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_area... Gives 146B in 2018.

That’s 350M number is also extremely suspect, at a minimum including existing city residents as the hotel reservations are vastly below attendance.

Still even assuming that 350M was correct and not ridiculously inflated it’s 350/146,000 = 0.2%.

You're confusing GDP with GDP per capita, and also 350,000,000 / 1,460,000,000 = 0.23972602739 and to convert that to a percentage you multiply by 100 so you get 23.973% as the result.

The number from wikipedia was 146 Billion (26 Austin-Round Rock, TX 146,784 metropolitan statistical area in millions of dollars) if you looked at the link I gave. Which is 146,784,000,000, though you could argue the city is a smaller area. Remember, thousand 3 zeros, Million 6 zeros, Billion 9 zeroes.

The GDP per capita was simply a sanity check showing how 1.4B must be wildly wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_area...

"SXSW brings Austin about $350 million annually."

Is that $350 million into the city taxes, or just $350 million for some private citizens, apparently some of whom you know and for whom it is undoubtedly a big deal.

It's $350 million in economic activity brought to or generated in the city, not in tax revenue. You can see the breakdown here.

https://explore.sxsw.com/hubfs/2019%20SXSW%20Economic%20Impa...

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