Utah’s Opportunity to Shine In the NBA Spotlight Is Just a Year Away

Hosting an All-Star NBA game is a big deal for any city, especially when it’s smaller like Salt Lake City. For one weekend, the city becomes America’s pop-culture capital.

In the old-time, Utah residents will recall the All-Star Weekend in 1993, where Karl Malone and John Stockton won co-MVP at the match. Music fans in this era will always remember performances by Boyz II Men and Paula Abdul, which were top-of-the-line acts of the time.

Since then, the NBA All-Star Weekend has only gotten bigger and even those who were too young to remember the 1993 performance are always looking forward to seeing the game come back to Salt Lake. For anyone who has been to All-Star Weekend, you can tell that the energy overtakes the host city as thousands of visitors come downtown for the biggest NBA talent gathering.

When the organizers announced that Salt Lake City will be hosting the 2023 event three years ago, most residents were truly excited they would enjoy this opportunity in their hometown. Now, there is only a year remaining before fans can start checking out All-Star Weekend odds on Betway, while others are already getting ready to buy the tickets.

There’s still much to be organized at the moment and there are quite a lot of things yet to be unveiled, but Betway punters can enjoy football bets in Mozambique while waiting for this major event. However, NBA has publicly acknowledged they’re expecting the event to have $100 million of impact.

What Fans Can Expect?

While a major part of the 2023 All-Star Weekend in Utah is not yet planned, Utah’s Jazz president Jim Olson says around 65% of the process is yet to occur. The remaining early 35% took place in several “whiteboarding” meetings hosted in Utah last fall. However, this started changing last month as dozens of representatives and planners traveled to Cleveland to watch the 2022 All-Star match.

Three big events will take place in Salt Lake’s main area (Vivint Arena), with the All-Star game hosted on Sunday night. The Rising Star game where sophomore and rookie players participate will be happening on Friday, while the 3-point All-Star night will happen on Saturday.

Tickets for each of these events will vary, with the Sunday All-Star match being the most expensive. However, there will be lots of other events planned for that weekend at the Salt Palace Convention and in other local venues.

How Many People Are Expected to Attend this Event?

The NBA has revealed that it expects around 100,000 fans to attend the event in Salt Lake City, similar to the numbers recorded in Cleveland this year. Among that, 40% of the fans are expected to be visitors, but some sports experts are still skeptical about that number.

The event organizers have revealed that they need about 6000 hotel rooms and Salt Lake City hosts around 7,275 hotel rooms. However, it’s hard to convince around 40,000 visitors to use only 6000 rooms at peak even when it included some double counting. Regardless of the number, there will be lots of people descending of Salt Lake City’s downtown.