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My GMAT debrief: from-620-to-710-my-gmat-journey-114437.html

A certain city offers publicly owned, desirable billboard-advertising space at heavily discounted monthly rates to locally owned businesses. Since the implementation of this policy, the city has increased the amount of billboard space sold per month. Nevertheless, the city could increase its revenues by revoking these discounts.
Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the claim above regarding the city's revenues?

A. The amount of discount generally offered is carefully calculated to represent the minimum needed to drive sales to local businesses.
This provides evidence to the contrary. If the discount offered is calculated to be the exact amount to drive sales, eliminating the discount will lower sales.

B. The discount was announced through select news channels and websites, but did not receive sufficient coverage for many local businesses to hear about it.
If anything, this provides evidence to the contrary. This evidence weakens instead of strengthens.

C. Many local businesses sub-lease their billboard space to non-local businesses at a significant markup.
Correct, this suggests that if they remove the discount, non-local businesses will buy the billboard space at a higher price.

D. For established local businesses, the purpose of this promotion is to allow such local businesses to fortify their market position against new chain stores that generally have better access to high-visibility advertisement space.
This is out of scope. This has no bearing on how much revenue will be gained. Incorrect.

E. Prior to the implementation of the discount, many city-owned billboards went empty for lack of interested buyers.
This provides evidence to the contrary. Incorrect.

I am with C but can't deny gmatpapa's reasoning regarding assumption.
can we assume that the city is willing to sell advertising space to outside businesses?
Please help us in this regard!
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Hmmm.. the premise doesn't let us assume that the city only sells to local businesses. Nor does it let us assume that it does not sell to outside businesses. The answer would be clear if any of the two assumptions were made explicit. I remain confused.
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My GMAT debrief: from-620-to-710-my-gmat-journey-114437.html

conclusion: the city could increase its revenues by revoking these discounts.

i actually think (B) weakens the claim, if the discount went out to only select news channels and websites, it is possible that not all businesses area aware of the billboard discounts? therefore, revoking the discounts can hurt revenue?

C clearly, revenues could be increased without discounts , if the billboards which are sub-leased by the local businesses at higher rates, could be directly leased by the city authorities.
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I still wonder about Choice C.
C: "Many local businesses sub-lease their billboard space to non-local businesses at a significant markup."
If normal price is 5000, the deduced price for local business is 4000, the markup is 500, then the price for non-local business is 4500.
If the we revoke the discount, non-local business would have less incentive to buy the ad, then there is no way revenue for the city will increase.
I think Choice C depends on the level of the "significant markup"

+1 C

There are companies interested in paying for those spaces without a discount.
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