The Indian Wells City Council voted to extend for an additional 10 years the city’s naming rights for the Indian Wells Tennis Garden for $2.5. The BNP Paribas Open is played there every March.
According to the Desert Sun, the $2.5 million payment will be borrowed from the city’s newly created capital replacement fund and repaid yearly with interest to the General Fund.
The city first agreed to pay for the naming rights in 1998.
“We compete for our tourists nationally and internationally and even regionally with locations like Scottsdale to fill our hotels and this amount of exposure is not possible without these kinds of programs. If you had to pay for the column inches of story and the numbers of times seen on TV or heard on radio, it would cost many millions of dollars in advertising charges, perhaps tens of millions.”
The BNP Paribas Open attracts more than 300,000 fans annually to Indian Wells and its annual economic impact is said to be more than $289 million.
The City of Indian Wells did suffer during the recession though, as it absorbed a $3.6 million loss after the state shut down its redevelopment agencies this year. As a result, the city’s 2012-13 budget contains increased ticket and transient occupancy taxes and staff cuts.
On election night, Indian Wells voters approved a hotel tax increase that will push the rate from 9.25% to 11.25%.
The tax must be paid by paying guests who stay in a “cottage, condominium, house, hotel, inn, tourist home or house, motel, studio hotel, bachelor hotel, lodging house, rooming house, apartment house, dormitory, public or private club, time share program, or other similar structure or portion thereof” for a period of 30 consecutive calendar days or less.”
©Daily Tennis News Wire
Topics: BNP Paribas Open, California tennis news, Indian Wells, Indian Wells Tennis Gardens, Sports, Tennis News
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