Despite metro Atlanta’s less than hospitable weather, the show will go on this week for a women’s soccer match and one of Atlanta’s biggest conventions — Cheersport.
After being pushed back a day, officials say the soccer game between the United States and Russia will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Georgia Dome. And on Friday, about 70,000 contestants and fans of Cheersport, one of the nation’s top cheerleading competitions, will begin arriving.
The greenlight for the events comes as Atlanta weathers another storm system that has shut down the city for most purposes. Residents and visitors have been asked to stay off the streets as ice and snow showers have made roads hazardous and impassable in some cases.
Dome officials are encouraging ticketholders for the soccer game — there were about 16,000 distributed — to stay off the road and take Marta to the event or to travel on foot if they are nearby. Those who can’t make it — the majority of tickets were sold to fans living in the northern suburbs —will have their costs refunded, leaders with the state-operated Dome said.
“Being mindful of warnings issued by our government officials regarding the safety and well-being of the public is our number one priority,” Georgia Dome General Manager Carl Adkins said in a statement. “While we are making every effort to host this match and to meet our contractual obligations, we want to be clear that no one should put themselves at risk by traveling to the Georgia Dome.”
Cheersport officials were setting up Wednesday in anticipation of the event, which begins Saturday. A letter sent out to members earlier in the week assured them that the nationals competition would be held and that officials were in constant contact with Atlanta convention leaders to address any problems.
Much of the bad weather is expected to be out of the metro area on Friday, but will impact travelers coming from the northeast.
As the city’s seventh largest convention, Cheersport is important to Atlanta, said Mark Vaughan, executive vice president and chief sales officer of the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau. At least 9,000 hotel rooms have been reserved for the competition, filling up lodgers from downtown to Buckhead and the suburbs.
Vaughan said conventions expect to lose some attendance to weather, a norm the industry calls “slippage.” Whether it be from hurricanes in Florida or wildfires in California, travel can always be interrupted somewhere.
“I’m sure we will have a level of slippage” in the Cheersport convention, he said. “Whether it will be more than normal has yet to be determined.”
