L.A.’s pick as 2018 NBA All-Star game host may spur more high-profile events

When NBA Commissioner Adam Silver revealed that Los Angeles had been picked to host the NBA All-Star game in 2018, Mayor Eric Garcetti joked that L.A. should become the permanent home of the annual event.

It’s an idea tourism officials would welcome. After all, the three-day celebration in downtown Los Angeles is expected to fill about 20,000 hotel rooms and spur more than $100 million in spending.

The 2018 game will mark the sixth time that Southern California will play host to the event, surpassing New York, which held the festivities five times. Tuesday’s announcement comes less than three months after the National Hockey League picked Los Angeles to host its all-star event in 2017.

Downtown Los Angeles has become a magnet for high-profile sporting and entertainment events, including the Grammy Awards, the four-day BET Experience and countless concerts. That’s thanks to the development in the last few years of dozens of new hotels, restaurants and nightspots within walking distance of the Staples Center arena.

And it doesn’t hurt that L.A. can also offer warm weather and a few celebrity sightings.

“It’s not just about the arena. It’s about everything else,� said Kathryn Schloessman, president of the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission, the panel that helped persuade the NBA to return.

“It’s important for the NBA that we have all of the hotels and restaurants nearby. They want to keep everybody together,� Schloessman added.

L.A. is greedy for more events. Schloessman said the city is making bids to host the NFL Super Bowl in 2020 and 2021 and an NCAA Final Four tournament in 2022 at the proposed football stadium in Inglewood, plus a Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game sometime after 2018.

Downtown’s recent emergence as an event destination underscores the city center’s dramatic turnaround from an office-heavy working world that cleared out at night and on weekends to a hot spot for the young and hip, filled with new bars, restaurants and housing.

Before Staples Center and the adjacent L.A. Live entertainment complex opened, in 1999 and 2007, respectively, the surrounding area was a dark and desolate stretch of warehouses.

Schloessman and other tourism officials say it has taken years to persuade event organizers from around the country that downtown Los Angeles has the hotels, nightspots and eateries to compete with cities like New York and Las Vegas for such high-profile happenings.

“The ultimate vision was to have the area grow into a destination that was a sort of self-contained campus that could accommodate these events,� said Dan Beckerman, president and chief executive of AEG, the company that built Staples Center and L.A. Live.

To take advantage of the growth, AEG plans to add 755 rooms to the popular J.W. Marriott in a new high-rise. The building will be connected to the existing 52-story hotel tower by a bridge over Olympic Boulevard, adjacent to Staples Center.

The sporting events and other gatherings in downtown L.A. helped Los Angeles County report a record 45.5 million visitors last year, a 2.8% increase from the previous year.

“High-profile events like NBA All-Star weekend are an economic boom for Los Angeles as visitors from across the globe fill our hotels, employ Angelenos and bring millions in direct spending to our restaurants, shops, attractions and more,� said Ernest Wooden Jr., president of the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board.

Economist Roy Weinstein, president of Los Angeles-based Micronomics Inc., estimated that the last NBA All-Star event in Los Angeles in 2011 generated $85 million in spending.

The most recent NBA All-Star celebration was held last month in Toronto, where economists estimated that the series of basketball skills contests, musical performances and hoops matchups generated about $100 million in spending.

With the addition of new hotels and restaurants in Los Angeles — including the opening next year of the 900-room, 73-story Wilshire Grand hotel less than a mile from Staples Center — Weinstein predicts that the basketball celebration will surpass the economic impact of Toronto’s version.

“It will be a huge attraction for that time of year,� he said.

Although some economists have dismissed the growth of Southern California’s tourism and hospitality industries, arguing that many travel and tourism jobs are part-time or minimum-wage positions, Schloessman said the big sporting events that come to Los Angeles also support high-paying jobs for planners, advertisers and others.

“It’s definitely not just servers and hotel workers who are benefiting,� she said. “It’s going across the board for offering opportunities for growth.�

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