Study says economic impact of Redskins training camp at $10.5 million
A newly released study says tax revenue for the City exceeded expectations.
The Washington Redskins Training Camp attracted 54,000 people — nearly half of whom traveled from outside the region–last summer and left an overall economic impact of $10.5 million, according to a study released yesterday (PDF) by the City of Richmond.
Nearly $8 million of that overall estimated impact derived from fan spending, with the remainder ($2.7 million) generated by the Washington Redskins themselves.
“Overnight visitors attending the Training Camp were responsible for significant economic impact, with average total spending of $887.89 during their stay,” said Sharon Judkins, the City’s Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for Finance, in a statement.
The VCU Center for Sport Leadership and Richmond Region Tourism collected information from lodgers, restaurants, grocery stores, entertainment venues, gas stations, and other businesses to complete the analysis.
A preliminary tally pegs the City’s generated tax revenue at just over $230,000, which surpasses a 2012 estimate of $194,981, an increase of 27 percent.1
“These are very positive numbers, especially considering that there are several amounts still outstanding that will count for this same period,” said Judkins. “Several businesses that we know were directly impacted by the Training Camp still have to report their meals taxes and it is our expectation that the total performance will keep trending upward as the data continues to be reported.”
But that data counters the sentiment of several business owners interviewed by RVANews following the training camp’s conclusion last August.
While there may be a disconnect between data and the perception of business owners, Mayor Dwight Jones expressed satisfaction with the findings nonetheless.
“The tax data that we’ve collected along with this survey information shows that the Training Camp’s impact on the city of Richmond and the surrounding area surpassed our early estimates,” Jones said. “Coupled with the tremendous earned media exposure for the city’s brand–valued in the tens of millions–we had a tremendous first year that we believe can only continue to get better.”
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Footnotes
- Style Weekly offers this caveat to those figures. ↩
photo by Anne Aurelia Lewis
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Nathan Cushing
Nathan Cushing is a writer, journalist, and RVANews Editor.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
That 10.5 million number includes figures from Colonial Heights, Hopewell, Petersburg, and Richmond, plus the counties of Amelia, Caroline, Charles City, Chesterfield, Cumberland, Dinwiddie, Goochland, many surrounding counties that likely had NOTHING to do with the Redskins.
You might also consider reporting that the City is facing a $20 million hole in it’s budget and Councilpeople are already talking about raising taxes.
Honestly, can we please get beyond just regurgitating press releases?
Basically this report is the result of an email survey that a little over 600 training camp attendees responded to. The respondents typed into the survey that they spent a certain amount on food, a certain amount on paraphernalia like jerseys and giant foam fingers, a certain amount on lodging, gas, etc. They added money from some Redskins staff that was here before the camp formally began. Then the mayor team projected that to everyone who went to the camp to get their $10.5 million figure. Obviously, it’s just a garbage number that tells you nothing.
All money spent on paraphernalia went outside the City except for some tax revenue. As to where the lodging and restaurant money went, it is completely unknown, except the Redskins brought national chains with them to the facility, and most people likely spent their food money right there.
There were food trucks at the stadium, but the only one I know of for sure was the Buffalo Wild Wings truck, and that was from the Henrico location on Broad, not the one inside Richmond. Stony Point gave gift baskets to all the people in the Redskins organization that included gift cards, and none of the gift cards were redeemed, so the players and staff didn’t do any shopping there.
The mayor needs to talk to the organizers of the camp and try get some of our own guys in there. He needs to try and block the national chains and get our city food trucks in. To do that, he could use a study based on the experience of local businesses that showed what the Redskins sold us was not what we got. So this is not useful. Here’s hoping things change next year.