The decision by the Mountain West Conference to suspend the 2020 football season has local businesses “taking it one day at a time” according to Tonya Gay, the co-owner of The Library Sports Grille and Brewery.
“The day the decision was made, I told my contact at Learfield that this is going to have long term consequences,” said co-owner of Roxie’s Bill Hensley. “It may be more serious than we know. Laramie is so intertwined with the university. Football brings so many people to town, it probably accounts for a good 50% of our business for fall semester.”
Hensley said Roxie’s was already “hampered” by COVID-19 restrictions and the lack of people going out to eat or drink. He said the options available to make up for that loss of business are limited.
“For us, it’s a huge deal,” said Gay. “I know the university is also struggling with everyone and they are losing a ton of money comparatively to Laramie. But I just hope the university realizes that there are small businesses that have a demand to be here and if we don’t have a football season or we don’t have a basketball season it’s going to cause a detrimental effect on the economy of Laramie.”
Juan Soto, General Manager at The Library, said “We have more employees with less shifts and we are only at half capacity. So that is one less server, one less bartender we need. It even trickles down to our beer suppliers. They aren’t getting the big orders they are used to because we don’t need the big orders. It’s throughout the chain.”
Gay said the prices of beek, chicken and produce have increased due to farmers who “were tilling their produce up into their fields because they couldn’t sell it” adding another financial burden.
“A game day is not just one day,” said Soto. “It’s an experience really, Thursday night all the way through Sunday night. And that’s the stuff a lot of businesses down here, us included, rely on. Retail down here will take a real hit with no football cause no one from out of town is gonna come shop or take a look at all the cool little stores.”
Soto said that even if there is a football season where fans are not allowed to attend, nobody will come into Laramie to watch the games on TV. He said there would be no positive effect for the bars and other business in town if that were to happen.
If school is canceled by the university then Laramie will go from a 32,000 person town to 13,000 which will make a difference for the businesses said Gay.
