Tens of thousands of people are expected to pour into downtown Atlanta this weekend for Monday’s College Football Playoff championship at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and many businesses are hopeful for some big spending from fans of the universities of Ohio State and Notre Dame.
Hoteliers and owners of restaurants and other businesses have been preparing for the game for months, hiring additional staff, bolstering their marketing and deploying extra resources to accommodate the influx of visitors.
The Signia by Hilton hotel at the Georgia World Congress Center, which opened one year ago this month, sold out of its 976 rooms and suites within 24 hours of Ohio State winning its semifinal matchup in the Cotton Bowl against Texas to advance to the title game. Many of the Signia’s guests are coming from Indiana, home to Notre Dame, and Ohio, General Manager Teri Agosta said.
The hotel, which has a two-night stay minimum this weekend, is next door to the stadium and will inevitably show up in some of the media coverage of the game.
“We’ll be viewed by households throughout the world,” Agosta said. “That’s always exciting, because the hotel will be in the backdrop.”
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The game is projected to have an economic impact of $75 million, according to a study commissioned by the Atlanta Sports Council. This number assesses the likely number of visitors, their length of stay and spending habits and accounts for direct, indirect and induced impacts. The report then compares that to the normal amount of business activity and reports the difference.
The economic impact of one big weekend is a drop in the bucket in a $570 billion metro Atlanta economy, and some normal economic activity is likely to be displaced as many office workers and locals will likely avoid downtown crowds caused by the big game. But sports business has been come a growing focus of city leaders.
Atlanta is no stranger to events of this size — the stadium hosted the national championship game between Georgia and Alabama in 2018 — and will host even larger ones in the years to come, including eight matches in the 2026 World Cup and the Super Bowl in 2028. Broadcast across the country, these games are valuable branding opportunities for the city and lead to a surge in sales for local businesses, many of which haven’t completely recovered from the pandemic.
Because Notre Dame and Ohio State aren’t from Georgia, this year’s game will likely have a much higher economic impact than the one in 2018, said Jerry Parrish, the chief economist for the Metro Atlanta Chamber.
Fewer people are staying in their homes and commuting to the stadium, with many flying or driving into the city, booking rooms in hotels or short-term rentals and patronizing restaurants. Frontier, Southwest, United and American Airlines have all added flights to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport from Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio, within the last several days.
“We see a lot of spending,” Parrish said. “If your team is in the national championship, you’re going to be drinking and eating a lot.”
Downtown’s Hotel Indigo, The American, Glenn Hotel, Embassy Suites at Centennial Olympic Park and Hilton Garden Inn are all sold out, all of which have three-night stay minimums, said Matthew Youhess. Youhess is the director of food and beverage with Legacy Ventures, the company that owns or manages those hotels. Legacy also operates several restaurants in the vicinity, including STATS Brewpub and Max’s Coal Oven Pizzeria.
Youhess estimates his restaurants will make five times the sales they make on a normal weekend without any events happening in downtown. The restaurants are bringing in extra staff to help, and STATS specifically is renting trailers to store extra beer and ice for the weekend.
On the day of the championship, Legacy Ventures’ restaurants will be closed for private events except for Der Biergarten. This way, the restaurants can control how much food they need to order and prepare, the number of staff they need to hire and, of course, how much they’re going to profit.
“With the cost of goods rising, you want to be able to control as much as you can control,” Youhess said.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For downtown restaurants, these large-scale events are an essential part of their bottom line, becoming increasingly important as fewer employees are coming to the office as often as they were before the pandemic.
“The happy hours, birthday lunches and people just getting out to get lunch or an early dinner — the walk-up traffic has gone down dramatically,” Youhess said. “We’ve had to make adjustments.”
The surge in sales will also help Legacy Ventures’ restaurants recoup some of the business they lost last week after closing during the winter storm.
