All-Star visitors are gone, but they left a lot of dollars behind

Brice Wallace 

The game is over, but regardless of who won, the NBA All-Star Weekend activities are expected to be an economic slam dunk for the Salt Lake City area.

Visitors coming into town, spending money at hotels and restaurants, and attending the slew of weekend activities, as well as widespread media exposure, were expected to flush the area with cash during the weekend and likely result in economic benefits for years to come.

“This is really an important moment for our state to shine,” Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith said a few days before the weekend. “I mean, it’s been 30 years” since the last All-Star Game in the city, he noted.

Local officials are hoping the economic impact in Salt Lake City will match or exceed the total impact of nearly $250 million that Northeast Ohio saw from Cleveland hosting the 2022 All-Star Weekend events and activities. The Greater Cleveland Sports Commission said the impact included $141.4 million in direct spending into the community from non-local attendees and corporations, and visitors accounted for 47,000 hotel room-nights.

“Two hundred fifty million dollars-plus of economic impact in a four- or five-day period, that’s pretty impressive,” Smith said.

About 121,600 people from 45 states and 24 countries attended NBA All-Star events in Cleveland. The activities also generated more than $50 million in earned media value and received $11.9 billion in total media reach, which includes more than 3,400 news outlets referencing Cleveland alongside the associated All-Star events between Jan. 1 and Feb. 28 worldwide.

“We may not have 122,000 people,” Mark White, chief sales and experience officer at Visit Salt Lake, said at a South Valley Chamber of Commerce event focused on the weekend’s expected economic impact. “I would be, frankly, amazed if we do. … But nonetheless, we’re going to see a lot of people here, spending a lot of money and filling a lot of hotel rooms.”

In addition to news media exposure, during the peak day last year, Instagram had 223 million views related to the game.

“That kind of exposure just does remarkable things to economic development opportunities down the road that are really impossible to measure,” White said.

Part of the panel at the South Valley Chamber event, Don Stirling, executive director for the Miller Family Office and former executive vice president of marketing and communications for LHM Sports & Entertainment, predicted “pixie dust in the air” as “the eyes of the world will be on Salt Lake City.”

He encouraged locals to participate in the various weekend activities or just enjoy being downtown “because it may not come back for another 30 years.”

Salt Lake City submitted a bid to host the weekend in February 2018. It was awarded in early 2019 and announced later that fall.

Clay Partain, executive director of Sports Salt Lake, said the NBA had to trust Salt Lake City at the time because the Hyatt Regency had not yet been built downtown. “Luckily, we have a Hyatt Regency here and everything is great, but there was a little bit of pressure going back to 2018 because we just didn’t know exactly how that was going to pan out,” he said.

Partain said sports tourism overall “is completely on wildfire right now,” with Salt Lake City able to do well even during the COVID pandemic and is even outpacing national growth.

White said exposure during both the 2002 Winter Olympic Games and the 2023 All-Star Weekend in Utah has been “remarkable.” The Olympics gave the city “instant credibility” as Visit Salt Lake sought conventions after the Games, he said, because it demonstrated that the city could handle hosting large, world-class events.

“The residual effect that we’re going to get out of this,” Partain told the crowd, “and the momentum that we’re already seeing, is going to lead to much greater business opportunities and opportunities we can take advantage of down the road that will benefit all of you as business owners and business managers.”

Meanwhile, Smith was optimistic that the number of visitors could reach 120,000. His wife and Jazz co-owner, Ashley Smith, said the All-Star Weekend represented “a cool opportunity for everyone else to see what we see.”

Joey Graziano, the NBA’s senior vice president and head of global event strategy and development, said Utah has “an exciting story” to tell the world about its growth, including in innovation and technology.

“To me, this is a state that has been transformed,” Graziano said. “I think that many of the stories that have been told about the city and state are 15 years old. And what’s so exciting about the opportunity that we have is to put this city on a global scale.”