east valley
Volume 1 Issue 28 Mesa, AZ
February 17, 2019
Cactus League is big business for EV cities BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY Tribune News Staff
T
IN THE BIZ
hough attendance was down slightly in 2018, the Cactus League continued to be a financial boon for East Valley cities. Mesa is home to the Chicago Cubs, the team that draws the largest Cactus League audience every year. That fact remained true in 2018 and Mesa has the receipts to prove it. The city took in $15,827,532 in sales tax in March 2018, up from the $14,620,629 it took in the year before. That total was Mesa’s largest single month sales tax revenue haul in the past two years. The Cubs led the Cactus league in attendance in 2018, drawing 222,023 fans, followed by the Arizona Diamondbacks (166,063) and San Francisco Giants (155,651). Mesa is also home to the Oakland Athletics, who play at Hohokam Stadium, the Cubs’ former home. Tempe, home to Tempe Diablo Stadium and the Los Angeles Angels, is not as reliant on Cactus League play to fill city coffers as other host cities. Tempe’s sales tax revenue of $8,085,000 in March 2018 was the fourth-highest monthly total calculated by the city in 2017-18. That total was significantly higher than the year prior, though. Tempe’s March sales tax revenue grew by 13.6 percent in March 2018 over March 2017. Some of that growth could be attributed to the Angels, who had just Public Notices ........... page 2 © Copyright, 2019 East Valley Tribune
signed international sensation Shohei Ohtani prior to Spring Training last year. Ohtani, a rare two-way player who could pitch and hit towering homeruns, drew an unprecedented amount of Japanese fans and media to Angels games last year. With Ohtani out with an injury this year, the Angels – and Tempe – could see Cactus League attendance slip. No East Valley city benefited more than Scottsdale as the city generated over $21 million in sales tax revenue in March last year alone – more than any other city in the East Valley. The city is home to one Cactus League team, the San Francisco Giants at Scottsdale Stadium, and two others, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies, play nearby at Salt River Fields in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. Scottsdale’s sales tax revenue of $21,613,590 in March 2018 was its highest monthly total in fiscal year 2017-18, accounting for just under 12 percent of citywide sales tax revenues that fiscal year. Fiscal year 2017-18 ran from July 2017 through June 2018. Despite its lasting popularity, the Cactus League is not always the top sales tax draw for Scottsdale, a city that hosts a number of high-profile events at the beginning of every year, including the Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction and Waste Management Phoenix Open. Beyond the East Valley, the rest of the state benefits economically from the Cactus League as well. A 2018 study from Arizona State Uni(USPS 004-616) is published weekly
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versity’s W.P. Carey School of Business indicated that the Cactus League generated a total economic output of $644.2 million for the state of Arizona, an 11 percent increase from the output estimated by a study in 2015. The study found that fans, teams and ballpark operations contribute approximately $24.2 million in taxes to the state and $7.7 million to local coffers. Much of that impact comes in the form of hotel room stays and, unsurprisingly, Scottsdale’s hoteliers are a major benefactor. The city collected $3,558,035 in bed tax collections in March last year. That total accounted for nearly 18 percent of the city’s total bed tax collections last fiscal year. Scottsdale did not exceed $2.5 million in bed tax collections in any other month during that time. Mesa, which has a less robust hotel industry than Scottsdale, saw a similar trend. The city collected $790,380 in bed tax revenues in March 2018, good for 18.5 percent of its total bed tax collections in fiscal year 2017-18. The $1,133,000 in bed tax collections in Tempe in March 2018 was the second highest monthly totals that fiscal year and marked 27.9 percent growth over the year prior. Though Cactus League has long been a money maker for host cities, those municipalities still make efforts to attract the most fans possible every March.
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