FACULTY MEMBER FEATURED : PETER ZALESKI (ECONOMICS) DATE: NOV. 25, 2011 MEDIA OUTLET: PHILADELPHIA BUSINESS JOURNAL AUTHOR: JOHN GEORGE
NBA lockout not dunking Phila.economy Peter Zaleski doesn’t think the region’s economy will take that big a hit if the Philadelphia 76ers never take the court this season. “People will find other ways to spend the money they would have spent going out to the game,” said Zaleski, an economics professor at Villanova University . He noted a city the size of Philadelphia has enough substitutes for entertainment — be it a movie, play, other sporting event or even a night out at a nice restaurant — that people who have discretionary income to spend will still have plenty of options to spend that money. Zaleski said the big losers will be, almost exclusively, the local people who work at the arena on game day. That list consists of the 100-plus concessionaires, parking attendants, and souvenir sellers who lose money every time a game is not played. Representatives of Philadelphia-based Aramark , food services vendor at the Wells Fargo Center, were not available to provide the specific number of people it hires to staff Sixers games. “With the NFL season entering its second half, the college football season reaching its climax, the presence of NHL, and the fact that this is the early part of a long NBA season, I do not foresee the local sports bar or restaurant scene suffering from an NBA strike — especially in major sports towns such as Philly,” Zaleski said. “The folks who go to a sports bar aren’t going just for Sixers. The Sixers aren’t the only game in town.” Jana Piehuta, assistant general manager at McFadden’s Ballpark, said the South Philadelphia sports bar and restaurant attached to Citizens Bank Park doesn’t typically draw large groups of 76ers’ fans when the team is at home. “We get bigger crowds from Eagles and Phillies games,” she said, noting that the Wells Fargo Center has its own restaurants. “It hasn’t had a big impact on us.” Zaleski said unlike in some NBA markets, Philadelphia doesn’t have a large concentration of bars and restaurants around its sports venues. Instead, places that attract sports fans are dispersed around the region — and those places won’t turn into ghost towns just because the 76ers aren’t playing.
2011 Media Report Villanova School of Business Page 233