Thousands of Harley Fans Mean Millions for Milwaukee
Harley riders and enthusiasts delivered $95 million in revenue during MoCo’s 115th anniversary celebration.
Whenever Harley-Davidson throws a party, the MoCo goes all out. This was definitely the case for its 115th anniversary last weekend, where over 150,000 riders and thousands more Harley fans gathered in Milwaukee to celebrate the MoCo’s legacy. Parades, motorcycle races, live music, demo rides, lots of street parties, if it was all about that orange and black, it was in Milwaukee.
Though everything is once again quiet in the big Wisconsin city, Harley’s 115th anniversary left a big impact where it most counts: the local economy. Via the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee’s tourism board Visit Milwaukee says the anniversary celebration brought $95 million to the city and surrounding region.
Visit Milwaukee representative Kristin Settle says the figure was drawn from the board’s economic impact calculator, which factors things such as hotel bookings, crowd sizes, and the scope of all of the festivities surrounding Harley’s 115th anniversary. She says the 150,000 figure is a rough estimate of those who rode into Milwaukee from Wednesday through Sunday.
Settle adds that the $95 million from “direct and indirect spending by the visitors and locals” attending the 115th anniversary gathering for the MoCo “has a huge ripple effect that will be felt for a long time in southeastern Wisconsin.” The big points for Visit Milwaukee were the flat track races at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Panther Arena, and the dozens of street parties in the city, both of which funneled tons of cash into the local and regional economy.
While she expects those 150,000 riders to come back with their friends and family, now that the riders know “how amazing and fun Milwaukee is,” it only goes to show that the Harley-Davidson family goes big for their beloved MoCo.
