Small-business owners in Georgia are slamming Major League Baseball over its decision to move the All-Star Game to another state in response to an election integrity law it deemed racist.
“As the owner of a transportation service in Atlanta, I know firsthand how badly our community wanted the All-Star Game played here,” Darrell Anderson, a black man, told the Washington Free Beacon this week.
“The $100 million in revenue to this area was going to be the opportunity for all of us to recover some of the losses that we incurred during the pandemic,” he added. “Now, not only is that revenue gone, we may lose even more because conventions that were planned for Atlanta are now up in the air, thanks to this decision by the MLB.”
MLB moved the site of the 2021 All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado last week in response to the controversial legislation tightening vote by mail restrictions and shortening the absentee ballot request window.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement that the decision was “the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport.”
Alfredo Ortiz, the president of a small-business advocacy group, sent Manfred a letter on Wednesday calling on Manfred to reverse the decision because of the “outsized impact on minority-owned businesses.”
“Your decision is punishing the very group you claim to be defending,” Ortiz wrote. “Small businesses in Georgia are hurting and you pulled a multi-million dollar rug out from underneath them. … Don’t let activist groups weaponize America’s pastime to push radical ideas that MLB fans don’t support.”
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It has been estimated that MLB’s decision to move the event will cost the city of Atlanta $100 million in lost revenue.
