BMW Championship economic impact on Baltimore County

When Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills last hosted the BMW Championship in 2021, fans were treated to a six-hole playoff between Patrick Cantlay and Bryson DeChambeau that Cantlay eventually won.

Baltimore County and Maryland officials hope for a similar fervor and attendance when the penultimate leg of the FedEx Playoffs returns to Caves Valley this week. Only the top 50 golfers in the FedEx standings qualified for the BMW Championship, and the field includes the World No. 1 and reigning British Open and PGA champion Scottie Scheffler, Masters winner Rory McIlroy and U.S. Open champion J.J. Spaun.

In 2021, Caves Valley welcomed more than 100,000 visitors over the nearly week-long tournament, with more than $23 million spent locally, said Abigail Vitaliano, deputy director for Baltimore County’s Department of Economic and Workforce Development. The event supported at least 450 jobs with more than $20 million in labor income, and the event generated more than $53 million in statewide economic impact, she said

“We’re really excited to welcome the crowds,” Vitaliano said. “We’re really excited to showcase all that Baltimore County has to offer. Especially where the course is situated, there’s a lot going on in the Owings Mills area and across the county.”

Vitaliano added that this year’s financials are promising.

“We know anecdotally that this year, we’ve been ahead on ticket sales, we’ve been ahead on corporate sponsorship. So it’s very clear that people are excited to come back to the Baltimore County area,” she said.

Vince Pellegrino, senior vice president of tournaments at the Western Golf Association — which sponsors the BMW Championship, said the organization recently completed an economic impact study of last year’s tournament at Castle Pines Golf Club in Castle Rock, Colorado. According to that analysis, the average spend per visitor for the event’s entirety was $1,300, and attendees stayed there an average of 3 1/2 nights.

Pellegrino did not have specific numbers on ticket sales or corporate sales for this week’s tournament, but was optimistic that the BMW Championship could match or even exceed last year’s numbers.

“I would say similarly, we’re seeing the same kind of uptick as it pertains to attendance and the impact that we think this will have on the community,” he said. “So I would say we’re probably in the $60 million total direct output and economic impact to the greater Baltimore area.”

Pellegrino said about 20% of last year’s visitors traveled from outside of Colorado to watch the event in person, and another 16% lived elsewhere in the state. Vitaliano said Owings Mills’ proximity to Interstate 95 makes it an appealing destination for golf fans along the Eastern seaboard.

“We saw a lot of folks come in last time from the I-95 corridor — people from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,” she said. “So we’re hopeful to expand and exceed, and we’re really just hopeful since 2021 was successful and we brought it back this time that people really start to look at the county like the premier playground for world-class sporting events.”

Pitching Baltimore and Maryland overall as venues for athletic contests is a priority for Terry Hasseltine, president of the Sport and Entertainment Corporation of Maryland.

With the Preakness at Pimilico Race Course, the CIAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments at CFG Bank Arena, the Baltimore Running Festival and the Maryland Cycling Classic in the streets of Baltimore, and Army-Navy football games at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore and Northwest Stadium in Landover, the area is equipped to host large-scale sporting events, he said.

“The other day was my 17th year of being in Maryland, and our résumé just has gotten stronger and better year after year.” Hasseltine said. “We’re starting to be consistent on the radar where people think about, ‘Where should we put on our next big event?’”

Caves Valley is only the fifth golf course to host the BMW Championship more than once, joining Cog Hill Golf and Country Club in Lemont, Illinois (four times), Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest, Illinois (three), Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Indiana (two), and Olympia Fields Country Club in Olympia Fields, Illinois (two).

Pellegrino said BMW officials took note that the 2021 tournament raised a record $5.6 million for the Evans Scholars Foundation, which provides college scholarships for caddies.

“I think they were a strong supporter of our foundation,” he said of the greater Baltimore region. “BMW loved the marketplace and thought that the volunteers really stepped up in ’21 to come out and help out with the championship. The corporate community and the golf fans of Baltimore showed up in ’21. I think that was a big reason to have us return.”

Vitaliano said Caves Valley members and Baltimore County agencies are well prepared to host the BMW Championship again.

“We have all been saying it’s a lot easier the second time around,” she said. “We kind of know what to expect, we know what to look for, we know what to plan for. 2021 was an amazing event. There weren’t really many issues. So we were very excited when Caves had the opportunity again to be the host course for the BMW. We welcomed it back with open arms.”

Many people would bring back that six-hole playoff between Cantlay and DeChambeau in 2021. Hasseltine said that drama had a spillover effect on the course.

“It was invigorating,” he said. “People hung out, and people were like, ‘Shoot, I was expecting to be out of here by 2 o’clock this afternoon because I thought the lead would be so wide open.’ But because it was compelling golf, people stayed, which means that people spent more money, people had a good time, and then in some cases, some people had to stay an extra night because they got off the golf course late. So that all adds up.”

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