State football championships

Why is the state high school football championship games such a big win for Chattanooga.

The state football championships for at least the next two years.

News 12 brian armstrong joins us live from outside finley stadium as he learns from local companies about how this title event in december will help the area economy.

Tennessee high school football title games have a new home and it's right here finley stadium.

This is big for not only high school football but for the economy something has been discussed here in the community for quite some time.

Tennessee secondary schools athletic association board of control voted 11 to 1 to move the bluecross bowl football championships from tennessee tech.

Chattanooga tourism company's c-e-o barry white says these games will bring an estimated three million dollars a year into hamilton county.

From a visitation standpoint this is primarily a three-day event there are going to be 18 teams that will play nine games.

900 athletes were anticipating about 3600 people.

One of the companies that stand to benefit is a brewery and restaurant across the street.

We're seeing a lot of businesses come into this area and the more events that we can put on here with all the bars and restaurants around us it's going to bring quite a big crowd flow in.

Championship weekend will help aid local businesses and restaurants after a tough year due to covid not having any event was a big blow for us as well as the stadium in general.

It's definitely a good light at the end of the tunnel to be able to see that come back around.

These large events have been missing.

We really haven't been able to have a lot of these types of discussions over the past year, so this is a big win for us.

No one wants to give away specific plans just yet, but there will be specific events just for championship weekend nothing i could say at this point in time.

You'll see a lot of activity downtown; they're going to be centralized in the central business district between the riverfront and finley stadium.

It's only about a mile and a half apart.

White did tell me with so many people from this area excited about the event there will be plenty of things for both tourists and locals to do including watching football.

Reporting live brian armstrong