By Scott Nishimura
snishimura@star-telegram.com
T-shirt purveyors and sports bars aren’t the only ones seeing a surge in business from the Texas Rangers’ deerlike romp to the World Series.
Area hotels, already enjoying a yearlong surge in bookings generated by the new Cowboys Stadium, are selling rooms for this weekend’s first-ever World Series games in Arlington.
A Dallas company hired by the Arlington Convention & Visitors Bureau is finishing a giant red Rangers cap with antlers that it will install atop the bureau’s headquarters next to Rangers Ballpark today.
And Randy Ford’s J. Gilligan’s Bar and Grill in downtown Arlington is a small economic impact machine unto itself, with Ford calling in more bartenders, cooks, waitresses, food runners and even an extra trash bin for the Series. He doubled the capacity of his restaurant, setting up tents in the parking lot, with live radio broadcasts and a jumbo TV on a truck. Fans jammed Gilligan’s for the first two games of the Series on Wednesday and Thursday, hoisting beers and noshing on Irish nachos.
“You gotta see this,” Ford said earlier Wednesday, offering a Madden-esque description of the 9-by-16-foot TV that CBS Radio leased from GoVision of Argyle and was rolling onto his lot. “It’s like a beer truck, except that, where the beer would be, there’s a TV.”
Businesses say the World Series is providing unexpected practice for Super Bowl XLV on Feb. 6 at Cowboys Stadium. Arlington hotels, which typically fill up for Cowboys games (the Cowboys play at home Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars), reported strong weekend bookings in a survey early this week, said Jay Burress, president of the Convention & Visitors Bureau. Games 3 and 4 of the World Series are set for Saturday and Sunday, and Game 5 for Monday night.
“Many of the hotels we surveyed are sold out for Saturday night,” Burress said. Sunday night was filling up, and some hotels were filling up for Friday night, when there is no Series game, Burress said. The bureau set up a World Series page on its site linked to hotel booking engines.
It’s difficult to determine how much economic impact the World Series is bringing to the area. The city of Arlington estimates that each game generates $1.3 million of direct economic impact for the city. That doesn’t include additional sponsorships, hotel and motel taxes, or the intangible benefits of media exposure.
“Every time the television commentators say Arlington, Texas, there is good exposure for our city,” said Wes Jurey, president of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce. “You can’t put a price on that exposure.”
With other events at Cowboys Stadium drawing guests at the same time, it isn’t easy to determine how many hotel rooms the baseball playoffs are selling, Burress said. Arlington hotels sold an estimated 5,998 room nights during the Rangers’ weekend home playoff series against the Tampa Bay Rays, when Texas A&M and the Cowboys also played in Arlington, Burress said.
Fort Worth is also enjoying bookings from the World Series, said David DuBois, president of the Fort Worth Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Based on reports from hotels, DuBois estimated that downtown hotels will host about 1,000 guests this weekend “due to activities related to the World Series,” DuBois said.
At about 1,200 room nights and $130 per night, that amounts to “a couple hundred thousand dollars just in room revenues,” DuBois said.
Throw in expenditures for food, beverage and items such as apparel, and “I would imagine conservatively, [the World Series] could be a $750,000 to $1 million economic impact in our city this weekend,” DuBois said.
And that doesn’t include local fans who flock to sports bars and other venues to watch the game, and don’t stay in hotels, he noted.
The bureau put up a World Series travel page on its website, blitzed San Francisco travel agents, talked to the San Francisco Giants and promoted Fort Worth to reporters and through social media websites.
The bureau views the Series as an opportunity to better position Fort Worth as a convenient stay for fans heading to the Super Bowl and events at Cowboys Stadium.
“We are the closest major city to the ballpark, and we are leveraging that,” said Leigh Lyons, the bureau’s marketing communications manager. “We have this wonderful opportunity, and it couldn’t have come along at a better time.”
Elsewhere, the World Series is boosting the banner business.
At Fun Factory Events in Dallas, employees were preparing to move their Rangers cap — 10 feet from bill to back and with 10-foot-wide antlers, a newfound symbol of the Rangers offense — to Arlington today.
Four employees have been working on the hat, Fun Factory owner Ken Thornton said. The Arlington convention bureau called Thornton on Oct. 21 with the idea.
“So many of our clients call whenever there’s something odd,” said Thornton, who’s done other projects for local convention bureaus and cities. “I don’t know how I got that reputation.”
Fun Factory produced rough sketches within a day and got the go-ahead late Monday afternoon. The hat has a metal framework covered with a foam pad, which is covered with red heavy-duty vinyl and includes a big Rangers “T” logo, Thornton said.
On Thursday, a carpenter was at work, a seamstress was finishing sewing, and members of the art department were stretching the vinyl across the frame, Thornton said. Fun Factory is bringing in a lift to raise the hat and attach it to the bureau’s building, a process Thornton said will be “almost as interesting as building the hat.”
Elsewhere, at Risner Naukam Design Group, an 11-year-old Keller firm that manages banners in the Arlington entertainment district, workers at the company’s Springtown plant this week were finishing 160 vinyl World Series shingles that crews will affix Friday to Rangers banners already up in the district, managing director Jeff Naukam said.
Workers will also be putting up window graphics at the convention bureau, as well as a 36-by-24-foot Go Rangers banner on the Texas Giant roller coaster at Six Flags Over Texas, Naukam said.
“We have been very busy,” Naukam said. “It’s good practice for when the Super Bowl comes.”
At GoVision, the J. Gilligan’s party is one of at least 14 events the 7-year-old firm is managing this weekend, ranging from a golf tournament in San Antonio to the Oklahoma Sooners football fanfest in Norman, said Chris Curtis, the owner.
GoVision has received calls on other potential Series-related deals from promoters and even individuals, Curtis said.
GoVision trucks its screens from Argyle to events nationally. The mobile units cost $4,500 to $15,000 for the first day, plus travel expense, he said, and $7,500 to $18,000 plus travel for a weekend.
Curtis figures to be doing a lot of business connected to the Super Bowl.
“We’re 100 days out,” he said. “We have some things booked, but we don’t have a lot of things booked. But we’ve got a lot of conversations going on.”
From Fort Worth Star-Telegram – Oct 28, 2010 – Read Article
