In stark contrast to the quiet, empty stadiums of 2020, much of the Atlanta sports industry mounted a stirring comeback this year.
Venues reopened, at first on a limited basis and then fully. Fans returned, sometimes – but not always – in pre-pandemic numbers. The economic engines of sports gained steam again, even with COVID-19 as a continuing threat, most recently from the delta and omicron variants.
“While I don’t feel like we’re 100% back to whatever ‘normal’ is anymore – I don’t even like to use that word – it was a robust 2021 and one that exceeded our expectations,” said Steve Cannon, CEO of Arthur M. Blank Sports and Entertainment, the parent company of the Falcons, Atlanta United and Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
In end-of-year interviews with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cannon, Braves CEO Derek Schiller and Hawks CEO Steve Koonin reflected on 2021 and looked to 2022. As a group, they’re optimistic, yet still wary of the uncertain environment in which they operate amid the coronavirus.
“What I have learned, more than anything, is flexibility and adaptability,” Koonin said.
The only Atlanta pro sports franchise that discloses its financial results provided a case-study of how the industry was decimated last year and how it rebounded this year: The Braves’ revenue declined 63% in 2020, plummeting to $178 million from a franchise-record $476 million in 2019, and then abruptly recovered to reach new highs in 2021.
Through the end of the third quarter Sept. 30, the Braves’ revenue for this year was $466 million, on track to exceed their full-year total of 2019 when fourth-quarter results, including postseason games, are added to this year’s ledger.
“We were more optimistic going into 2021 than just about anybody else, and we beat even our own optimism,” Schiller said.
Of course, winning the World Series helped.
But the Braves aren’t the only Atlanta sports team that said it has had a record year on the business side.
The Hawks’ revenue is at franchise-high levels, Koonin said, thanks in part to the momentum created by a postseason run to the NBA Eastern Conference finals. The Hawks sold more than 10,000 season tickets for the 2021-22 season, Koonin said, up from about 4,000 a few years ago. “In every (business) metric, we are at an all-time Hawks high,” Koonin said.
“It’s breathtaking, it truly is,” he said of the business recovery, “compared with a year ago (when) we didn’t know what we were getting into.”
Cannon said AMB Sports and Entertainment’s revenue this year is “not quite” back to 2019 levels, “but close.”
“We budgeted more conservatively given all the unknowns,” he said, “and we have been pleasantly surprised that it has bounced back faster, more significantly, than we had initially anticipated.”
Curtis Compton / Curtis.Compton@
Curtis Compton / Curtis.Compton@
This year began with the local sports industry unsure when stadiums would reopen fully and, beyond that, unsure how long it would take fans to return.
As it turned out, Atlanta’s major sports venues reopened to full capacity beginning in May, unleashing a pent-up demand. Stadiums and arenas across the country soon followed.
“In early June, it’s like the clouds parted and the sun came out, and all of a sudden NBA arenas were filled for the playoffs,” Koonin said.
The Braves wound up with attendance, defined by MLB as tickets sold, of 2.3 million during the regular season – up from zero in 2020, when MLB played a shortened schedule without fans in the stands, and down from 2.65 million in 2019, with that drop largely attributable to limited seating capacity in April. The Braves ranked second among MLB teams in 2021 attendance and said the fans’ return facilitated the $10 million payroll increase in July that allowed trades for four outfielders who proved pivotal in winning a championship: Adam Duvall, Joc Pederson, National League Championship Series MVP Eddie Rosario and World Series MVP Jorge Soler.
“Once we started the season in April with reduced capacity, we quickly realized there was huge demand out there,” Schiller said. “Especially as vaccine rollouts happened. … We benefited because we play in an outdoors ballpark that made people feel more comfortable.”
Announced attendance figures in sports don’t necessarily represent the number of people in, well, attendance. NFL, NBA and MLS teams announce the number of “tickets distributed.” The number of people actually attending can be considerably less, and COVID-19 may have increased the no-show rates among season-ticket holders.
“We dealt with no-shows,” Cannon acknowledged. “We dealt with some folks who are still kind of finding their way back into large sports venues.”
Of course, three consecutive losing seasons entering this one, as the Falcons had, don’t help, either.
AMBSE chief revenue officer Tim Zulawski reported in an October presentation to the Georgia World Congress Center Authority board that the live-entertainment industry “is experiencing a 10-30% no-show rate across the country.”
Curtis Compton / Curtis.Compton@
Curtis Compton / Curtis.Compton@
But in some cases -- the World Series games at Truist Park, for example – few, if any, tickets went unused. And in general, many Atlanta sports events looked normal, or thereabouts, in 2021 after a dismal 2020 during which games were played in “bubbles,” if at all, and cardboard cutouts often replaced fans in the stands.
“You saw the strength of sport all across the country in 2021,” Cannon said “The fact so many folks came out against the backdrop (of COVID-19) just demonstrates how important sport is. People missed it. They didn’t get enough of it in 2020.
“And I think 2021 was the year where folks evaluated their own personal risk … and made decisions about whether they felt comfortable going to a place like a stadium. Overwhelmingly, they voted with their feet and came into big sports events all across the country.”
The pandemic caused the cancellation of some major college sports events in Atlanta in 2020, including college basketball’s Final Four and three Chick-fil-A Kickoff football games, and resulted in sharply reduced seating capacities at others, including the SEC Championship football game and the Peach Bowl. But in 2021, two Kickoff games and the SEC Championship game were played in a full-capacity stadium, the latter drawing an announced crowd of 78,030. The Peach Bowl is set for Dec. 30.
“A comeback season is the right way to put it,” said Gary Stokan, CEO of Peach Bowl Inc. “Sports probably led the rejuvenation of economic impact from tourism in Atlanta this year more than anything else, with so many conventions wiped out.”
Still, as the variants spread and the pandemic’s death toll exceeds 800,000 people in the U.S., sports organizations know the virus is not behind them.
“I’m not declaring victory by any means,” Koonin said. “As a winter sport, I do know there is uncertainty.”
In a three-day span in mid-December, approximately 100 NFL players tested positive for COVID-19. The league postponed three games that week and updated its health and safety protocols, requiring masks regardless of vaccination status and mandating remote or outdoor meetings. Around the same time, the NBA also had a surge in coronavirus cases, including a positive test by Hawks star Trae Young, and postponed five games in a three-day period.
As 2022 approaches, Atlanta’s teams will enter a third year of coping with the virus and are resigned to dealing with it for the foreseeable future.
“Throughout the past 20 months or so, we’ve learned so much as a business, as a ballpark and as a team about how to operate (in this environment),” Schiller said. “We as a sports team had never been through a pandemic. So now, having done that, we can take those lessons learned and apply them much easier in 2022.”
Said Koonin: “There’s not going to be a day where we open the paper and see ‘COVID gone from the world.’ It’s not going to evolve that way … so we have to be incredibly flexible and understand that things can and will change.”
Cannon: “We’ve got plenty of doctors saying this thing is going to be endemic. We feel great that the vaccines have helped and that there are new treatments coming on line. … But we assume protocols on the operational side and protocols on the football side are going to continue to have an impact on our players and our operation in Flowery Branch. It’ll continue to inform how we bring people into (Mercedes-Benz Stadium). ... There’s always the possibility of some kind of variant that might shut everything down.”
On balance, though, 2021 went well enough for sports teams and venues here to make executives hopeful about 2022.
“I feel we’re going to continue the trajectory we’re on toward improvement and bounce-back in the coming year,” Cannon said.
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