The MLB All-Star Game was last night, and the word being used to describe it most in headlines is “historic,” which is the nice way of saying it was tied after nine innings and decided by a mini–home run derby because baseball changed the rules in 2022. And the thing about history is that it can be good or bad, or both depending on your perspective, so it’s a fair word for everyone to describe what unfolded last night.
What hasn’t changed, meanwhile, is the torrent of article that accompany every major sporting event these days, claiming the true historic event is the rain of economic activity that falls from the sky as a result:
According to preliminary estimates, the All-Star Game and surrounding events are expected to generate at least $50 million in economic activity for metro Atlanta. Statewide, officials believe the number could approach or surpass $100 million, comparable to what Georgia was projected to lose when the 2021 All-Star Game was relocated.
This is the kind of reporting that causes sports economists to lose their shit. The impact of sports mega-events has been studied to death at this point, and the findings show that while events like All-Star Games or Super Bowls obviously draw tons of fans, they often drive away other visitors who steer clear of town during the event, cost significant amounts of public money for hosting and supporting the event, divert money and attention from other things cities could be investing in, and siphon off much of their benefits to out-of-town interests. And when pressed back in 2021 on the source of their economic projections for an Atlanta All-Star Game in particular, the league and county officials who boasted of them already backed away from them, with the county saying they came from the Braves and MLB, the Braves saying they came from the league, and the league denying any role in calculating them at all.
USA Today sportswriter Gabe Lacques visited The Battery, the bespoke neighborhood that the Braves built in a wooded area alongside their new suburban stadium that opened in 2017 with the help of more than $300 million in county money, and found that while it’s a success from a team real estate development standpoint, generating $67.3 million a year for the team, it hasn’t done much for the county, and certainly not for the Atlanta metro area as a whole:
Certainly, Cobb County captured the revenue that used to go to Fulton County when the Braves played there. Yet much of the activity – a night at the movies, a mid-range dinner, a round of drinks with the boys or the baddies – simply would have occurred somewhere else minus The Battery’s existence.
“You built a department store,” says JC Bradbury, an economist and associate professor at Kennesaw State. “We already have seven of those in Cobb County. It’s not transformative for development when you look at a county that’s a ($64 billion) economy. It’s a rounding error.
“Even though they’re always touted as a great economic engine, they’re not. And the data bear this out.”
Bradbury has already crunched the numbers and found that the county is losing about $15 million a year in tax revenue on the Braves stadium development, a figure that didn’t make it into any of this week’s coverage, not even USA Today’s.
And, hey, what was all that way back up above about “when the 2021 All-Star Game was relocated”? Also not mentioned much, in an event that celebrated Henry Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s career home run record while downplaying the groundbreaking civil rights aspects of the moment, was the fact that Atlanta was originally supposed to host the All-Star Game in 2021, but MLB took it away because of concerns over Georgia’s draconian new voting laws that threatened to disenfranchise many Black voters. What ever happened with those laws, anyway?
In fact, voting rights experts say, conditions have only worsened for potentially disenfranchised voters….
A Brennan Center for Justice analysis of the 2022 midterms revealed that the racial gap between white and Black voters was the largest in at least a decade.
As opponents of the bill indicated, reducing the amount and availability of drop boxes would have a disproportionate impact on voters in areas like Fulton County, where they were abundant during the presidential election but much scarcer in the wake of SB 202.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s explanation of why he changed his mind despite the laws that led to the 2021 cancellation not changing one bit: “I made a decision in 2021 to move the event and I understand, believe me, that people had then and probably still have different views as to the merits of that decision. What’s most important is that the Atlanta Braves are a great organization. Truist Park and The Battery are gems in terms of the facilities, and Atlanta and Georgia have been great markets for us for a very, very long time.”
All that reporting is again courtesy of Lacques, who is shaping up to be the hero of All-Star week journalism, along with folks like Craig Calcaterra and Bradbury. Much like last night’s game itself, the impact of the All-Star Game looks exciting and historic on the surface, but it leaves out a lot of the story.