Source: Chron.com
Seven years after last hosting, NBA commissioner David Stern announced Wednesday that the All-Star Game and weeklong festivities will return to Houston in 2013 at Toyota Center.
“Houston is a spectacular sports city, and for one week it will be the basketball capital of the world,” said Stern, who made the announcement, attended by city leaders and nearly a dozen former Rockets players, during a news conference at Toyota Center. “I want to thank the city and the Rockets for welcoming us once again.”
The three-day event will be held Feb. 15-17. Among the events planned are the NBA Rising Stars Challenge and NBA All-Star Saturday night, which features the 3-point shooting contest and popular slam-dunk contest.
The NBA All-Star Jam Session, an interactive fan experience, will begin earlier in the week a few blocks away at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
An estimated 200,000 fans are expected to attend the three-day event, Rockets and NBA officials said.
It should be noted that Houston was reported to be in line for the 2013 game last August, but as that was during the lockout it wasn’t made official. Now it is, so go ahead and book those plane tickets.
You know what’s coming next, right?
City officials estimate that the economic impact on the region could be $100 million.
It always gives me a warm feeling inside to read an economic impact estimate for a sporting event. I note that the story from August said that the 2006 All Star Game had “an estimated economic impact between $80 million to $90 million”, which compares quite favorably to the NBA’s before-game estimate of a “total economic impact up to $79.6 million”. Not that we have any actual, after-the-fact data to back any of it up, but I think I’m mostly over that by now.
Disappointing that officials didn’t shoot higher with their absurd economic benefit projections to the city. Why not $1 billion?! This is Texas by gum. We do things big here!!!