Bristol's bid to host 2018 World Cup matches, if successful, will have a massive impact on the West's economy and the city's international standing for many years to come.

So many of our own offices throughout the UK, Europe and around the world have stories to tell about the economic legacy benefits that have abounded from hosting major international sporting events.

The experience of Germany and France, for example, is that locations that hosted matches for recent World Cups became globally recognisable. Further afield, our office in Atlanta, Georgia, has said the benefits from the Olympics in that city were massive and in many ways the ongoing business was a far greater legacy than the event itself.

Recent weeks have seen the extraordinary economic benefits from hosting the exhibition of "graffiti artist" Banksy in Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. That event attracted vast numbers of visitors to Bristol, delivered extraordinarily increased takings for local traders in a deep recession, and put the city on the national radar screen of publicity.

If hosting an art exhibition can do that, it doesn't require too much imagination to see what hosting a World Cup football match could do.

Just as there has been so much talk about the legacy benefits for east London from the upcoming 2012 Olympics, events like the World Cup also deliver massive legacy bounty.

For Manchester, hosting the Commonwealth Games led to the regeneration of an entire swathe of the inner city, and bequeathed world-class infrastructure and sporting facilities. That regeneration and redevelopment is truly impressive, and is contributing to Manchester's new "feel" of being a major international city, that has now attracted the relocation of important BBC operations from London.

If Bristol's bid to host World Cup football were to succeed, it could be the vital stimulus needed for the long overdue regeneration of south Bristol, which remains disconnected, but an area of real opportunity. A successful bid to host World Cup football could unlock the funds for the transport improvements that will transform the fortunes of south Bristol. The biggest benefit, however, would be the way in which hosting World Cup football would project Bristol and the West of England onto the TV screens and news pages of people around the world.

Right now, Bristol is not as recognisable to international audiences as cities like London, Edinburgh and Manchester with their global tourism and business reputations. Bristol and the West have a superb "product" to offer both tourists and business investors alike, but most of those people have no awareness of our city and region. In this world of product recognition, the hosting of World Cup football would put Bristol and the West onto the "must-visit" list of tourists and inward investors – just as areas that have been used for filming big movies have seen their economies transformed.

Inward investors are the Holy Grail of boosting regional economies throughout the world. The biggest recession in living memory has seen a huge reduction in the number of international companies looking to invest in moving or setting up their operations in the UK and Europe – and intensified the competition among European cities to attract those valuable investments.

Boardrooms around the world are as open as living rooms to the TV images of World Cup football matches. This is borne out by the experience of my US colleagues in Atlanta, Georgia, who report that their city (and much of their State) secured significantly increased inward investment as a result of its Olympic exposure.

This is not just about boosting Bristol: if the city's bid is successful, there will be very real spin-off benefits for the entire West of England.

Meanwhile, another South West football club, Plymouth Argyle, has also lodged a World Cup bid – and is being backed by the creation of a new joint-venture consortium company. This is a visionary move.

This is one of those special occasions when the entire community seems to be uniting.

Everyone in the West stands to gain from a successful Bristol bid for World Cup football, so we should all get behind that bid. The city council and football clubs are to be applauded for driving this forward. All that is now needed is the new stadium.

The rewards will be well worth the effort.

We must recognise that Bristol and the West of England do not feature very strongly on the Government's map of areas for investment. So we need to exploit every opportunity that comes along to boost our area's economic prospects. There is no doubt that winning a place in the schedule for World Cup football matches would be one of those rare opportunities.

World Cup success, without any doubt, would provide an immense boost to the economic prospects of Bristol and the entire West of England. We now need to spread a "viral message" of support, spanning all parts of the community, so that everyone can become an enthusiastic ambassador.