Championship could pay dividends for years
Bucks made city look good for worldwide audience
Real Chili was supposed to be open until 3 a.m. Wednesday, but after the Milwaukee Bucks defeated the Phoenix Suns to win the NBA championship at home, the eatery was swarmed with celebrating fans and forced to close early. “We could’ve stayed open until 3 a.m. but we ran out of food,” manager Michelle Olson said. “We pretty much had to close at 1 a.m. It was incredible. “I can’t think of anybody that didn’t cry when this happened.” After the game, the nearly 20,000 fans inside Fiserv Forum joined the estimated 100,000 fans outside and others who poured into downtown to celebrate in the streets of Milwaukee, the new city of champions. The Bucks’ NBA Finals appearance alone introduced the city to a worldwide audience. That unprecedented platform — and then winning it all — helped grow the Bucks brand and could have lasting impacts on the city for years to come, especially among young people.
“This put us on a national stage and shows, frankly, our culture in a different way that’s hard to capture any other way,” said Kathy Henrich, CEO of MKE Tech Hub Coalition.
“It’s a culture that celebrates,” added Henrich, whose nonprofit group was created in 2019 to grow tech talent and innovation in the Milwaukee area.
“Whether that’s 65,000 fans together, which is pretty phenomenal or whether you look at Summerfest celebrating music or the (ethnic) festivals that celebrate different parts of our culture.”
The NBA Finals gave the city the chance to show to an audience outside of Wisconsin that it can handle major events, said Peggy Williams-Smith, CEO of VISIT Milwaukee. The city lost out on such an opportunity a year ago when the Democratic National Convention was scaled far back due to the COVID pandemic.
“As a city we have the infrastructure to host 65,000 people for an event safely,” Williams-Smith said. “What the Bucks showed with the Deer District and the upcoming expansion of the convention center, on a national stage we were able to say we can accommodate these big groups.”
Williams-Smith said VISIT Milwaukee is bidding on NCAA basketball tournament games through 2028.
Title will jump start pandemic recovery
Bucks president Peter Feigin said the championship was “perfect timing for the city of Milwaukee to help jump start (recovery) out of the pandemic.”
Like a lot of businesses, Real Chili at 419 E. Wells St. suffered financially through the pandemic but managed to stay open.
“People weren’t coming down here at all,” Olson said. “They were hitting the Third Ward a little bit but not this end of the downtown and with Fiserv not being open, it really did affect our business.”
When the Bucks started their playoff run, more people started coming downtown to be near Fiserv Forum for home and away games, which benefited businesses in the Deer District and those farther away, like Real Chili.
“It’s been super exciting that people have been able to discover this Bucks team and how awesome they are, and, in turn it just brought so many people to downtown,” Olson said.
Rick Schabowski, author of the book “From Coin Toss to Championship: 1971The Year of the Milwaukee Bucks,” remembers the team’s first championship 50 years ago. He was at Fiserv Forum to see the second championship sealed.
“Boy, after that game my hands were sore from slapping five with so many people,” Schabowski said. “I think a lot of cities would like to have the situation our fans are in.”
While residents will remember the 2021 season, Schabowski said they’ll also remember that the team embodied the spirit of Milwaukee on the road to winning it all.
“(Milwaukee residents) work together as a team, whether that be in an office or a factory or other industry. If something goes wrong, they’ll stand up and say something,” Schabowski said.
“And the Bucks epitomize the same thing. They’re not going to take garbage from opponents or referees... and the fans relate to it. It’s not like LA or Hollywood, or glamor or glitzy, it’s lunch bucket basketball.”
And while the Bucks have been contenders to win the NBA championship the previous two seasons, Schabowski said winning the championship in 2021 as opposed to 2020 when the team finished the season in “the bubble” in Orlando, Florida, was the ideal situation.
“We probably wouldn’t have had a parade because of COVID,” Schabowski said.
“The celebration would have been downsized because of the medical restrictions. There’s more fan attachment to the team, to the series and to the NBA with COVID not lingering over your head.”
Investing in the future
As bars, restaurants and other businesses welcomed customers seeking to watch the team or buy Bucks gear, the impact of the championship wave will be seen in the months ahead.
“That actually makes it easier to attract talent from outside of the region because talent actually chooses, first, where they’re going to live and, second, where they’re going to work,” Henrich said.
“I think we do have this opportunity to capitalize on the win and really continue to build out our story and to promote our story more broadly outside of the region.”
Feigin agreed the Finals run has helped change the perception of the city.
“Right away you get people in the psychological and emotional way to think about a city differently,” Feigin said. “And that helps attract people. That is a directional to get people to think differently about it.”
Henrich said the Bucks have built a “blueprint that long-term investment leads to long-term success.”
“Investing that in high growth areas and being very intentional about inclusion of those that have been traditionally underrepresented in those high growth areas,” Henrich said.
“Tech is a good example. Women, individuals of color are very underrepresented in tech. So being intentional around our investments... that they’re inclusionary and that we have very specific targets of inclusion of demographics that have been underrepresented is one of the ways on which we can capitalize on that.”
Hospitality can be another area that could see more investment.
“The big opportunity is for the hospitality and the sports and entertainment industry as a whole to rethink how can we operate and pay our employees, our part-time employees, a living wage that makes sense,” Feigin said. “If you can get to that, you solve a lot of the issues.”
Peter Rickman, president of Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization, which represents workers at Fiserv Forum, said there is a “fundamental problem with the hospitality labor market.”
“It’s a complicated and conflicting moment here because for some people who have been able to go back to work, it’s been a lifeline to have some paying work available even if it’s not full-time, 40-hour a week work,” Rickman said. “It’s been a lifeline over the last few months to have this (playoff run) but it’s a lifeline for those who could make use of this moment.”
Rickman added there are cooks, servers and bartenders at Fiserv Forum that rely on multiple jobs to pay their bills.
“It is vitally necessary for folks in this town to grapple with how we can rebuild hospitality labor markets coming out of the pandemic and actually meet the needs of the cooks and the bartenders and the servers,” Rickman said. “We shouldn’t have to take a chance on a playoff run by the Bucks or the Brewers. We shouldn’t take a chance on there being generous tippers.”
Rickman said the positive feelings about the future of the city is “just cheerleading.”
“Sixty-five thousand people down at the Deer District does not pay the rent for a hospitality worker any better than if the Bucks had not opened that up,” Rickman said. “And all of this talk about ‘It’s bringing the city together,’ I think it’s more harm than good in some ways because it gives people the false impression on the surface level that things are improving for working class people.”
Finals raise for arena workers
Anthony Steward, a premium cook in the suites department, worked Game 6 cooking for the Milwaukee Brewers and Kendall Jenner, girlfriend of Suns star guard Devin Booker. He’s cooked for the Antetokounmpo family and for the Bucks players.
Normally his bosses make sure the cooks are working instead of watching the games, but Steward said he was able to watch some of the historic game.
“They weren’t as strict as they usually would be with it being the final game. They were making sure we did our part,” Steward said.
Last year when the NBA shut down, and then restarted in Orlando, arena workers like him lost out on a paycheck.
The Bucks players and organization put together a fund to help provide some financial assistance to the workers that take care of the team, fans and building.
“The Bucks didn’t have to do this for us,” Steward said. “That shows the mutual feelings that the Bucks players have with the employees. It makes me feel like the Bucks organization respects their employees.”
During the NBA Finals, Steward got a raise of $1.50 per hour, making his hourly pay $18. Other arena workers also received raises.
“It got us more money in our pocket for sure, working more games and everything,” Steward said.
Feigin said it was an “easy decision” to give the arena workers a raise because there weren’t many days off during the playoffs.
“We wanted to reward employees in a time when labor has a tremendous shortage,” Feigin said. “We really suffered in recruiting and retaining labor, and we really valued those who came back to us.”
But the pandemic is still having an impact on workers. With the season over, workers have limited opportunities to earn income as fewer entertainment acts are traveling.
“I know we’re missing out on a lot of work,” Steward said.
Racial justice important to the Bucks
Milwaukee also has issues with racial inequities when it comes to housing, law enforcement, criminal justice and education.
The Bucks in recent years have been public in their willingness to address social problems in the city, including initiating a wildcat strike during the 2020 playoffs after the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
“We have not backed away from social justices and disparities of wealth, the real challenges that the city has,” Feigin said. “We all have gaps; we all have opportunities. They continue to exist but it allows us to really aggressively be aware of them and attack them and look for solutions.”
In March, before the playoffs started, the Bucks provided $10,000 grants to 20 minority owned small businesses.
Steward said it’s “very rare” to see so many people of different backgrounds celebrate in one place. He hopes area residents can build off of that shared experience.
“This is a really divided city and with the Bucks winning that championship, I think that’s going to put us together,” Steward said.
“I really think this is going to make this city a better city.”