Bar owner Brian Maloof was losing $25,000 a month in the pandemic. The game was to be his lifeline.
After a year that saw his historic downtown Atlanta tavern nearly shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic, Brian Maloof was looking forward to not one, but two all-star events in 2021 that could have reinvigorated his struggling business.
In early March, the NBA was holding its All-Star Game just a couple of miles from Maloof’s business, Manuel’s Tavern, a long-time watering hole for journalists and Democratic operatives. And in July, Major League Baseball was on deck to hold its All-Star festivities across town.
Maloof expected to benefit from both events. Instead, the NBA event was a bust for local businesses after Atlanta’s mayor urged people to stay away. Then last week, MLB pulled its All-Star events from Atlanta to “demonstrate our values as a sport.” The decision was in response to the state’s new election security law, which leftwing activists, Democratic politicians, and President Joe Biden have mischaracterized as resurgent “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.”
Even though the MLB events were scheduled to take place about 15 miles away, Maloof said he expected to do up to $6,000 in additional business each day of the festivities. But maybe just as important, he was hoping the events would serve as a symbolic new start for his tavern.
“I was thinking, ‘Alright, we’re going to be at maximum capacity again. And the masks won’t be necessary. We’ll be at an 80 percent vaccination rate in the state. Everything is going to be back to normal, is what I was hoping,” Maloof said. “To lose the game to what I perceived as intentionally misleading information about the legislation and a knee-jerk reaction from Major League Baseball was just very insulting, and seemed very unfair and incredibly dirty.”
Businesses across the Atlanta metro area were looking forward to a jolt of economic activity driven by MLB’s All-Star events, including the popular home run derby, as well as the actual All-Star Game itself. Recent MLB All-Star events have generated between $65 million and $80 million for the host communities, according to estimates. The CEO of Cobb County Georgia’s tourism arm estimated that MLB’s decision to move the All-Star Game to Colorado will cost the local economy about $100 million – big dollars to small businesses.
That total included more than 8,000 hotel reservations that will likely be canceled, spending on tickets and stadium food by more than 41,000 people who were expected to attend the events at Truist Park, and spending on travel and recreation before and after the game, said Alfredo Ortiz, the CEO of the Job Creators Network and an Atlanta-based small business advocate.
“The ripple effect on the local economy of a full MLB stadium after a year of lockdowns can’t be understated,” Ortiz said in an email. “The entire Greater Atlanta area will suffer.”
Some prominent Georgia Democrats, including Stacey Abrams and Senator Jon Ossoff, have spoken out against MLB’s decision to pull the All-Star Game from Atlanta. Cobb County Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said she was “certainly disappointed” by MLB’s decision. Her colleague on the county commission, Jerica Richardson, told the local East Cobb News that “we’re obviously not happy at all” about MLB’s decision, and called the game “an opportunity that’s lost.”
There are parts of the law she likes and parts she doesn’t, she told the paper, adding that “the people who were most impacted by that bill were not listened to. You can’t solve anything when people aren’t talking to each other.”
‘Battling for Life’
Maloof’s business has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years. The tavern, which has a big baseball fan clientele, took a hit when the Atlanta Braves moved out of Fulton County and into Cobb County in 2017, he said. And the COVID-19 pandemic was “devastating” to the business, he said. Sales have been down about 60 percent since last March, Maloof said, and he’s been losing about $25,000 per month.
When the tavern was close to going under last winter, some of the bar’s regulars launched a GoFundMe campaign that’s raised more than $187,000 to save the establishment.
Maloof was hoping to get a boost when the NBA held its All-Star Game in Atlanta on March 7. But in the lead-up to the game, Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms urged fans to stay home and not travel to the city, directed bars and restaurants not to host events, and called for the game to be a “made-for-TV event only.”
Maloof had hoped the NBA event would have been good for business. Instead, he said, “It was the biggest non-event you’ve ever seen.”
But, he said, his tavern has more of a baseball crowd – people gather there for food and drinks before games and then watch the games on TV or carpool to the stadium. He was optimistic the MLB All-Star events would have provided a financial and psychological boost to his business, to his employees and to his vendors.
“The beer companies would have reached out to us with posters and promotions, T-shirts and hats,” Maloof said. “And it trickles down in a huge scale, you know. All the extra chicken wings we would have had to order from our food vendor … I have to order extra napkins, I have to order extra condiments, we have to order wing sauce, we have to put on extra staff. It all adds up. And it becomes a big number at some point.”
Maloof said his business is getting by, but he’s “tremendously concerned” about another resurgence of the virus. “I’m not coasting here,” he said. “We’re still battling for life.”
‘A Sticky Situation’
Andy Erbacher, the owner of AJ’s Famous Seafood and Poboys in Marietta, Ga., just a couple of miles from the Atlanta Braves’ stadium, also was hoping for an All-Star Game boost. Erbacher’s restaurant has benefitted from the Braves moving to Cobb County. He expanded his restaurant just before the pandemic, doubling its size, and significantly increasing his overhead.
“Not being a fortune teller, I had no idea what was coming,” he said. “So, no sooner did I get it open, the expansion, I had to turn around and shut it down.”
Rather than doubling his sales to make up for the increased costs, receipts have been down over the last year, Erbacher said. He had been looking forward to extra business from the All-Star Game, and hasn’t heard of any MLB efforts to help the affected Atlanta-area businesses.
“I would welcome any opportunity to speak with someone that would actually create a benefit to the business instead of a detriment,” Erbacher said. “It’s hard. . . . I literally went through damned near everything I had in the bank to get us through.”
Neither Maloof nor Erbacher said he understands the controversy surrounding the law, which actually expands early voting days in the state and authorizes absentee ballot drop boxes for the first time. The most controversial measures — proposals to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting and Sunday voting — were removed before Governor Brian Kemp signed the law.
Maloof said he believes lawmakers were in a “sticky situation” after Abrams, the 2018 Democratic candidate for governor, and former president Donald Trump both questioned the integrity of the state’s elections after their losses. Lawmakers also had to adjust to new voting measures implemented on an emergency basis in 2020 because of the pandemic.
Maloof said he was “proud of the state of Georgia” for the way it’s handled the voting law changes and the subsequent political fallout. “I honestly believe Major League Baseball made a huge mistake,” he said.
Ortiz said the All-Star Game was an opportunity for Atlanta businesses to earn back revenue they lost during the pandemic. Instead, they’re getting hit again by “MLB’s ‘woke’ politics.” He said MLB should reconsider its decision and move the game back to Atlanta.
“They just moved it to Denver a few days ago. There’s no reason they couldn’t reverse the decision and bring it back to Atlanta,” he said. “That’s really the only practical thing MLB can do to help Atlanta’s business community. Nothing else would come close.”
“They need to move the game back to Atlanta.”