The Milwaukee Brewers are allowing full capacity seating at American Family Field starting June 25. In a letter to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the organization explains the economic impact of allowing the baseball team to once again have the seats filled at the ballpark.
Among the highlights:
- American Family Field is expected to generate more than 3,000 local jobs throughout the 2021 Brewers season.
- Nearly half (1,300) of those jobs are direct Brewers employees, a mix of seasonal workers at the stadium and permanent staff.
- American Family Field has generated a total statewide economic output of $2.5 billion, according to the ball club.
Below is the letter from the Milwaukee Brewers:
June 22, 2021
The Honorable Tony Evers
Governor of Wisconsin
The Honorable Tom Barrett
Mayor of Milwaukee
Dear Governor Evers and Mayor Barrett,
The COVID-19 pandemic brought tragic losses, difficult changes, and a profound economic cost as communities, employers, and policymakers worked to find solutions that could keep the people of Wisconsin safe. Major League Baseball was no exception, and the Milwaukee Brewers have strived to be a constructive partner in how to move forward and get back to living our lives after COVID shut down one of Wisconsin’s most crucial economic engines: American Family Field. This letter serves to provide you with a detailed accounting of the process of reopening the ballpark – one of the finest in professional baseball – and the impact this economic engine will have on our state and communities when it is back to full strength.
As of the writing of this letter, the Milwaukee Brewers and its partners are hiring and ramping up operations in anticipation of our first 100 percent occupancy game in more than a year, set for June 25. This landmark event would not be possible without your leadership and the dedicated work of Wisconsin’s public health officials, including Kirsten Johnson, MPH, of the Milwaukee Department of Health. For all of your efforts that have led our ballpark to return to full capacity, the Milwaukee Brewers are sincerely grateful. While the progress on this is ongoing and the needs of each individual game vary, the economic impact of this effort is profound. Over the course of the 2021 season, the Milwaukee Brewers and its partners expect the economic engine that is American Family Field to generate more than 3,000 jobs. The hard-working team members who will fill these jobs will help the Brewers, its subcontractors, and other partners operate the ballpark, serve our fans, and ensure that everyone who comes to American Family Field has the kind of game-day experience that will keep Wisconsin on the map as one of the best destinations in Major League Baseball.
These 3,000 jobs make Milwaukee Brewers baseball possible and show what a powerful economic engine American Family Field is for the state of Wisconsin and its communities. They also demonstrate why having professional baseball in Milwaukee has created billions of dollars in statewide economic impact over the years – it is hard to imagine a better way to encourage economic recovery from COVID than to have fans in the stands again. Additional detail on this data follows:
Nearly half of these jobs, around 1,300 of them in fact, are direct Brewers employees – many of them seasonal workers who help us operate the ballpark and serve our fans, while others are permanent staff who help make the Brewers organization operate every day of the year. Another 1,200 are additional subcontracted workers who help operate concessions, including the soda and beer hawkers who climb the aisles selling refreshments to generations of fans, a staple of America’s pastime. Others are employed by the Brewers Community Foundation for the 50-50 raffle – which has generated nearly $10 million for community causes since it began in 2010- and by other third
party outside partners who provide support to the ballpark on game days, including law enforcement, health care workers, cleaning, parking services, and more. These jobs are roughly on par with past typical years, but in 2020 only a fraction of them were active because of COVID’s impact on our ability to welcome fans to American Family Field.
The 3,000 expected jobs this year are part of a far broader, multi-billion-dollar economic impact that is being restored after COVID idled the ballpark and left it unable to accommodate fans for the 2020 season. In fact, one study released by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce in early 2020 placed the total statewide economic output of the ballpark at $2.5 billion since it was constructed, plus thousands of jobs each year due to spending in the community. The jobs in MMAC’s study are largely above and beyond the jobs that we are projecting from the Brewers and American Family Field this year – in part because the MMAC study looks at the impact of spending in the community when people from across the state and the country come to see a game, as opposed to just the positions related to ballpark and team operations. It is also estimated that since the ballpark’s construction, these jobs have accounted for $1.2 billion in workers’ personal earnings.
These 3,000 jobs serve fans from every corner of Wisconsin, and many parts of the country. In 2019 – the most recent year that serves as a useful reference given the impact of COVID on the 2020 season – customers buying tickets were from more than 8,300 distinct zip codes in Wisconsin and across the country.
As is evident from these numbers, the efforts underway to get American Family Field back to full occupancy are not only important to those who love baseball – they are important to the economic recovery of the state of Wisconsin and its communities, including Milwaukee as home of the Brewers.
We thank you for your efforts to work with us to get to this point and look forward to continued efforts together to get this economic engine back up to full speed.
Sincerely,
Rick Schlesinger
