While the focus right now certainly needs to be on everyone staying healthy, it might be worth taking a moment and planning for some of the economic troubles the state could be facing over the next few months. The state of Georgia and its economy are about to get hit pretty hard from COVID-19-related event cancellations. It is happening across the country but perhaps no state in the union is about to take as big a hit as Georgia is over the next month – this year in particular.
April was shaping up to be a pretty big boon for Atlanta. The NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four, along with the Division II and Division III championships, were all scheduled for the first week of April. On Thursday, the NCAA announced that all tournaments would be cancelled due to concern of COVID-19.
The Final Four alone was expected to bring in an estimated $100 million economic impact. The Division II and III tournaments are not normally held in the same city as the Final Four but those tournaments alone usually attract tens of thousands of fans to the host city. All together, the three tournaments would likely have had an impact bigger than any event besides the Super Bowl.
Unlike Major League Baseball or the National Basketball Association, which have both suspended play but could potentially pick back up on a delayed timetable, the Final Four consists of students which would be nearly impossible to all bring back for a later date.
There is some conversation about moving Atlanta up in the timetable to host a Final Four in the future, rather than waiting until 2027 which is the next earliest open slot. The NCAA has not commented as of yet on this question.
Besides basketball, April is also the annual time for the Masters golf tournament in Augusta. The final decision regarding fan attendance or whether the tournament will go on at all has yet to be made but just before InsiderAdvantage deadline, the PGA announced that the next few tournaments leading up the Masters have all been cancelled.
Unlike the Final Four, which is a one-off of sorts that is not necessarily counted into projected revenue or budget estimates, the Masters in Augusta is a yearly event that brings a lot of money into the Georgia town. Many families in the area are able to rent out their houses or provide other services that may boost their overall annual income. No matter what the PGA does, many would-be fans are likely to cancel plans and Augusta will take a big hit.
The problem will end up going well beyond a short-term loss for small businesses. The tourism industry as a whole has an annual economic impact somewhere north of $60 billion, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. Several weeks – or possibly even months – of a severe drop in tourism, along with other cancelled conventions and festivals, may really stretch the thin budgets of Georgia municipalities and the state, which was already seeing a bit of a revenue shortfall from projections, may be dipping into that rainy day fund this year.
On Thursday night, Governor Brian Kemp announced a new website to track COVID-19 in Georgia.
Kemp’s focus for the next few weeks will undoubtedly be on Georgians’ health but he will likely be dealing with the fallout for the rest of the year.
