Houston Roughnecks a casualty of COVID-19 economic shutdown
HOUSTON - A shocking announcement today in the sports world. The XFL has suspended operations, letting go of its employees. It’s another organization that’s being crushed financially under the Coronavirus Pandemic.
When the stay at home orders began we thought it would be a few weeks, we’d lose a few million dollars, and life would go back to normal, but now with the uncertainty of when this will all be over, our city continues to take an economic hit.
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The Houston area was built by the oil and gas industry and is one of the hardest hit during the Coronavirus Pandemic. The Offshore Technology Conference was canceled this month and has cost the city of Houston roughly 100 million dollars. Stephen Graham, the Executive Director, Offshore Technology Conference tells Fox 26 “Over the 50 years we calculated it’s over $2 billion that we have contributed to the city of Houston through economic impact.”
No one would have expected the great impact the pandemic would have on the sports industry. The XFL was revamped, and off to a promising start. The Houston Roughnecks were undefeated when the season came to a halt. Fox 26 spoke with now-former president of the Houston Roughnecks, Brian Cooper “We’re living in some very uncertain times and we have a lot of uncertainty surrounding a number of industries and that includes sports, and What kind of a byproduct of that right now. There’s just so many variables out there, you just don’t know what’s going to be happening so we were mindful of that.”
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It was announced that the XFL has suspended operations and laid off their employees. But it’s more bad news for Houston since we were the host city for the championship.
“Just like OTC and the rodeo it would’ve shown our city, our wonderful city, in such a great light, and I think it would’ve been a magical time for this area. That’s one of the other things is that Houston is just so great and the people are so resilient that, you know, we were trying to tap into that strength and resilience as well. I don’t know the actual impact, but I do know that this city… We will bounce back through all of this.” says Cooper.
It is tough to know what the total economic impact is to our city because the numbers change frequently. As for the XFL, it’s unknown if the league will make a third comeback in the future.