CLEVELAND, Ohio — It’s NBA All-Star Weekend in Chicago and Thursday morning, local executives are flying to the windy city in hopes of gaining information that will help when Cleveland hosts the four-day event in 2022.
“We’re trying to figure out logistics and what’s going on at the fan fest and maybe with the pregame things,” explains Greater Cleveland Sports Commission Vice President, Mike Mulhall.
“We just look at it through a very different lens being events people.”
Mulhall says the NBA alone has already blocked 30,000 hotel rooms for the Cleveland event. They’re expecting between 50,000 and 75,000 people in Northeast Ohio with an estimated $100 million pumped into the local economy.
That’s money from hotels, restaurants, attractions, retailers and so much more. There will also be journalists and contractors who will likely spend more than four days in the city.
“We’ll have media literally from all over the world here,” he explains.
“It’s a worldwide enterprise and so the eyes of the world will be on Cleveland, Ohio which we love.”
There’s still a lot of planning and work to do.
“Just because we’re going to see the event in Chicago doesn’t mean that we’re going to cut and paste the event from Chicago to Cleveland, we’re going to put a Cleveland stamp on it,” says Mulhall.