Sport is routinely described as an engine of growth, but the evidence sits in three bodies of work that rarely meet: statistical accounts of the whole sport economy, studies of major events, and research on football club finance. We bring them together for Europe with data available in mid-2026: the EU Sport Satellite Account (2019), harmonised finance data for the five largest football leagues (2023/24 and 2024/25), club revenue structures from the Deloitte Football Money League, and the evidence on UEFA EURO 2024 and the Paris 2024 Games. Sport generated an estimated EUR 627.5 billion of GDP (3.4%) and 9.27 million jobs (3.8%) in the EU-28 in 2019. The five leagues earned EUR 21.6 billion in 2024/25 but lost EUR 1.5 billion before tax, with wage-to-revenue ratios from 54% (Bundesliga) to 80% (Ligue 1). Leagues with more even revenue mixes had lower wage ratios and better operating results (Spearman |ρ| = 0.90, n = 5, exact p = 0.083), but within-league changes between seasons did not follow the same pattern. Commissioned estimates for EURO 2024 (EUR 7.4 billion) and Paris 2024 (EUR 6.7 to 11.1 billion) exceed an independent forecast and an official audit (EUR 6.6 billion of public spending, +0.07 percentage points of GDP growth). We conclude that the economic case for sport rests more on participation, services and tourism than on elite football or mega-events, and we set out conditions for transfer to Arab economies.