Groups sues MLB for $100M over decision to pull All-Star Game from Atlanta

A small business advocacy group has filed suit against Major League Baseball and league officials over the decision to move the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta’s Truist Park, WSB-TV reported.

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In the 21-page lawsuit filed Monday in federal court, officials with the conservative Job Creators Network asked a judge to order the MLB to move the game back to Atlanta and to pay $100 million in damages to businesses affected by the decision. Previously, Cobb County officials estimated that the move amounted to about the same amount in losses, WSB reported.

“MLB robbed the small businesses of Atlanta – many of them minority-owned – of $100 million, we want the game back where it belongs,” Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the Job Creators Network, said Monday in a statement. “This was a knee-jerk, hypocritical and illegal reaction to misinformation about Georgia’s new voting law.”

>> Related: MLB All-Star Game, draft moved from Atlanta

Officials announced the decision to move the All-Star Game and the MLB Draft from Atlanta in April amid criticism of voting restrictions passed by Georgia legislators and signed into law in March, The Associated Press reported. Gov. Brian Kemp has insisted the law’s critics have mischaracterized what it does, yet GOP lawmakers adopted the changes largely in response to false claims of fraud in the 2020 elections by former President Donald Trump and his supporters.

In the lawsuit filed Monday, officials with the Job Creators Network said more than 8,000 hotel reservations were canceled in the metro Atlanta area due to the decision to move the All-Star Game. However, J.C. Bradbury, an economics teacher at Kennesaw State university, told WSB that such estimates tend to be inflate.

>> Related: Reports: 2021 MLB All-Star Game finds new home in Denver

“The reality is that the economic impact is closer to zero,” he said, adding that studies have shown that All-Star Games bring only small changes in sales tax revenues.

“When you’re talking about some event being $100 million, that would show up in the data, and it just doesn’t show up,” he told WSB. “It’s too small of an event to have that type of impact.”

In April, MLB officials announced that the 2021 All-Star Game had been moved to Coors Field in Denver.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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