Sunday, February 17, 2008
Sports

Worst sports city in America?

Is Atlanta still Loserville, USA?

“NO CITY CAN COMPETE WITH US”

“If the Braves make the playoffs this year, there is no excuse for the stands not to be full.”—ESPN announcer and Atlanta resident Erin Andrews

“I look at all pro sports teams as belonging to the people, and the people deserve the best management talent and best support possible.”—Billy Payne, 1996 Olympics organizer

So really: worst sports city in America? Hardly, considering that Atlanta is also home to both the Peachtree Road Race, the world’s largest 10K event, and the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association (ALTA), the largest recreational community tennis league. The metro area is littered with public and private golf courses. And baseball, soccer, football, golf, ice hockey, lacrosse, basketball and tennis all thrive on youth and high school fields and courts throughout the city. If it’s true that Atlanta is at times hesitant to dip into its pockets to watch a game, it’s also true that Atlanta hardly balks at participating in sports activities.

That’s not to say Atlantans don’t go to events, too. The city has hosted an unparalleled number of big-time sporting contests in recent years, including a pair of Super Bowls (1994, 2000), two NCAA Men’s Final Fours (2002, 2007), two NCAA Women’s Final Fours (1993, 2003), the PGA Championship (2001) and All-Star games for Major League Baseball (2000), the NBA (2003) and the NHL (2008). Atlanta Motor Speedway hosts a pair of NASCAR’s top-division races each year, and the PGA Tour makes a pair of annual local stops, including the season-ending Tour Championship.

“From 2000 to 2008, those events helped drive more than $1.5 billion in economic impact to Atlanta,’’ Stokan says with a smile. “No other city in the country has held the number of major events we’ve had.”

In recent years, both the ACC and SEC have staged their men’s basketball tournaments at the Georgia Dome, with the latter conference set to play its title game there next month. And of course the SEC has held its conference football championship game at the Dome for 14 straight years. The same facility is also home to the Chick-fil-A Bowl, which sold out for an 11th consecutive year last December; the 74,000-plus fans made it the third-highest attended among all bowl games. And speaking of college football, let’s be honest: For more than 100 years, Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia have been the real pro franchises for this city’s inhabitants.

Certainly, it helps that Atlanta is home to major corporations—including Coca-Cola, Delta, Home Depot, UPS, Georgia Power and Chick-fil-A—that have demonstrated deep pockets in terms of sponsorship dollars. And there’s no shortage of sponsorship opportunities on the horizon: Atlanta is set to host events both large and small for the foreseeable future, including the ACC men’s basketball tournament (2009, 2012), the PGA Championship (2011), the yearly AVP Atlanta Open volleyball tournament and the two-day RaceTown Atlanta festival (both at Atlantic Station), as well as an annual season-kickoff college football game at the Georgia Dome featuring at least one team from the SEC or ACC (Alabama faces Clemson this year).

Atlanta remains a contender for future NCAA Final Fours, and Stokan says he’d still like to anchor a sports-themed project to Centennial Park after the city’s failed attempt to land the NASCAR Hall of Fame two years ago.

Oh, and there was a little event called the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. Not only did Payne’s dream become a reality, it created a $5 billion economic impact and branded Atlanta to the 70 percent of the world’s population as a great place to do business. Today, Atlanta is home to nearly 1,600 international companies, representing a more than 30 percent increase since the Olympics.

“When you add the whole composite together, no city can compete with us,” Stokan says. “It’s been a wonderful run.’’

So is Atlanta a bad sports city? It depends on the criteria one uses. Certainly, inconsistent play in the big leagues has contributed to a wariness, if not widespread apathy, among fans and, perhaps more importantly, potential fans. But there’s no denying that sports has become a major part of the fabric of this city, and that’s not changing anytime soon. Now, if we could just notch a couple of championship titles … SP