The Impact In Salt Lake City - impact of National Basketball Assn lockout on local business - Brief Article

Kelly Gates is a free-lance writer in Rochester Hills, Mich.

Despite the scandal and controversy surrounding Salt Lake City's winning bid for the Winter Olympics, the Games are still expected to bring a gusher of profits when they arrive in 2002.

Until then, however, the main sports attraction is expected to be the Utah Jazz. But when the local favorites were locked out along with the rest of the players on National Basketball Association teams, fans-including many in the local business community-went into a funk.

"Other cities might have other sports teams who keep them going, but in Utah we have the Utah Jazz and that's it," said Dave Ipaktchian before the NBA players and owners in early January accepted a new collective-bargaining agreement that promised to end the lockout.

Ipaktchian is manager of Iggy's Sports Bar, two blocks away from the Delta Center, home of the Jazz, "We're a sports bar, and we depend on the turnout from the games," he said, adding that in December, revenues were "down 60 percent on game days because of the lockout."

Grant Shetler, owner of the Red Rock Brewing Company, a microbrewery and restaurant near the Delta Center, said before the end of the lockout that it had cost his business "at least $25,000."

In a medium-sized city with a metropolitan-area population of about 1.2 million, many Salt Lake City residents feel fortunate to have a professional sports team at all. Twenty years after the Jazz arrived from New Orleans-bearing a name that seems incongruous in this conservative, Mormon stronghold but has stuck just the same-the team has become not only a cultural fixation but also a pillar of the local economy.

From street-corner signs pleading "Let's Play Ball" to pedestrians clad from head to toe in team paraphernalia, the city is saturated with Jazz fans and symbolism-right down to small Jazz-logoed trash cans in some stores.

The impact of the lockout on business was broad. In December, for example, shoppers visiting Gart Sports-one of a handful of sporting-goods stores in the city's two adjacent downtown malls-appeared to largely ignore the game jerseys, shorts, and other merchandise bearing Jazz and other NBA logos.

Taxi driver Tanni Folaumoeloa, who works regular shifts during the day, no longer could count on earning a lot of extra income from moonlighting on game nights. On the day of a playoff game last year he took in more than $300-more than he usually earns over several days.

Maria Cordero was assigned fewer hours on her part-time job as a parking attendant downtown-a job that helps her pay bills and child-care expenses. "I have two kids, and it usually helps me pay for their day care," she said before the lockout was resolved. "Even though it doesn't bother the players because they have the money, they don't know how it affects us."

A less tangible but still important effect of the lockout was not having "Salt Lake City" appear in sports reports and in other media attention to spotlight the town.

"The team has helped in building a lot better image for our community on a national and international level, and that visibility has significantly increased our opportunities in the past," says Steve Lewis, president of Lewis Brothers Stages, a local bus company "With the last two NBA finals, we've had national TV exposure as we've bused the Bulls to and from practices."

In fact, Nancy Vulmer, a marketing executive for the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce, believes that a loss of exposure might have been the biggest casualty of the lockout. "The Jazz bring millions of dollars in exposure to the city," and months' worth of such exposure went down the drain.

COPYRIGHT 1999 U.S. Chamber of Commerce
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group