The Denver Nuggets are world champs. No. Really. Our town’s NBA team—for the next twelve months—sits atop the basketball world as kings of the hill. As the old song goes, ‘Happy days are here again.’ Now the city can just sit back and let the dough roll in. Isn’t that what we’re told after a big-time sports win? The economic shot-in-the-arm from XYZ game or series translates into payoff! Well, depends on who you ask.
Forbes says the city “can expect (the championship) to bring in tens of millions to local economies.” Likewise, Yahoo! Finance, the Denver Gazette, The Denver Post, Denver Economic Development and Opportunity, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and a number of other national and local media outlets seem to agree. All weigh in with similar predictions about the Nuggets win; championships translate into salad days for the city.
At the Ball Arena store, that was certainly the case. Just a day after the victory parade, where nearly half a million Nuggets fans turned out to cheer the champs, business was running hot. Hats, jerseys, pennants, anything with a Nugget logo, anything blue-and-gold, everything signifying ‘our team’ was being snatched up. Cash registers, like old pinball machines, were zinging.
Of course, Ball Arena—where the Nuggets hammered the last nail into the Miami Heat’s coffin—wasn’t the only place where, plastic in hand, people were scooping up championship memorabilia.
On the 16th Street Mall, business was brisk even before the Nuggets parade. At ‘Where the Buffalo Roam,’ a sports memorabilia store, store manager Drea Copeland said a championship will make for even better business. “It’ll be ‘all hands-on deck,’” said Copeland as the store prepared for parade day. “On our busiest day we’ll get, like, 1,800 people,” coming in. But the Nuggets big win, she said, could make it a banner day. “I’m thinking it might be over 2,000 people.” Copeland says hats and tee shirts are the store’s most popular Nuggets items.
The euphoria over the Nuggets has been building steadily ever since the playoffs began. As the team banished—in order—Minnesota, Phoenix and then the LeBron-led Lakers, excitement has risen to fever pitch. The Nuggets—just like last year’s Avalanche Stanley Cup win—have created a movement.
An Altitude executive who asked his name not be used estimated that the Avs win in 2022 translated into “$20 million” in merchandise sales. Altitude is owned by Stan Kroenke, team owner of both the Avs and Nuggets. Altitude is also the network that broadcasts both teams’ games.
While there may be disagreement about the economics of a championship in a city, there is no doubt that there is a real time economic boost. Media and fans from all over the country and world flock to the games, filling up hotels and restaurants. Arenas hire more personnel to staff conces- sions, work the doors and handle various inside and outside jobs from ushers to parking attendants. There is also that hard to estimate benefit from the free media that flows from the games. It’s a figure that’s hard to quantify but is usually estimated in the millions of dollars. As the adage says, ‘there is no publicity like free publicity.’
But setting all the economics aside, there is that one thing events like this create that has no price.
Former Altitude and television news photographer Dan Steffes and his son, Wyatt, drove eight hours from Omaha to be part of the championship parade. While Steffes had promised his son that if the Nuggets won, they would make the eight-hour trip to the Thursday celebration something bigger took place putting his promise in jeopardy.
The day before the parade, the Steffes family held a funeral for its matriarch, 92-year-old Arlene Steffes, putting any plan for a road trip on the back burner. “It almost didn’t happen because of my Mom,” said Steffes. But, after weighing everything, Steffes decided the trip might be the best thing.
“Maybe it would be therapeutic.” It was and so much more. The pair had made the same 550-mile trip a year earlier when the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup. That trip was special. This one, even better—for both. It gave Steffes a chance to see old Denver friends, both in and out of work. It gave his son the opportunity to see the team he grew up watching perform at the highest level—and win it all!
“This trip will stick with me for a long time,” said the younger Steffes, a rising junior at the U of Nebraska. “This team has been a team that’s been part of my relationship with my dad.” From early on, he has tagged along with his father to team practices that were the elder Steffes job to photograph and conduct interviews.
The parade and the nearly half million blue-and-gold loyalists who attended last Thursday, as eye-popping as it was, may have actually been an afterthought for Steffes and son. It cemented a memory for the pair that will last years longer and be far more special than anything that took place in the arena or on a parade route in the city—and not only for this father and son.
The game, the parade, the euphoria will also serve as a generational etching for thousands of other familial relationships. Years from now, it will be far more important than a blink-of-an-eye, ephemeral economic boost to a city. It will be a pebble in the pond moment where the concentric circles just go on and on and on.
