For 44 years, Memphis in May put this city on the map every spring. The Beale Street Music Festival packed Tom Lee Park with 100,000 people over three days. The World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest drew teams from 30 countries and spectators who planned their vacations around pulled pork. The Triathlon, the 5K, the Sunset Symphony. Together, the month-long festival generated more than $100 million in economic impact for Memphis, according to the organization’s own figures.
This year, for the first time since the festival’s founding in 1977, none of it happens.
Memphis in May initially tried to postpone. Back in March, organizers announced they’d shift everything to September and October. Beale Street Music Festival would move to the first weekend in October. Barbecue Fest to late September. It felt optimistic at the time. It feels naive now. Last week, the organization confirmed what most people already suspected: the entire 2020 season is cancelled. No postponement. No modified version. Just gone.
For the security industry in Memphis, this isn’t just disappointing. It’s financially devastating.
The Contracts That Vanished
Event security is a major revenue stream for Memphis’s private security firms. A festival the size of Memphis in May requires hundreds of security personnel across multiple days, multiple venues, and multiple shifts. Perimeter security at Tom Lee Park alone needs 50 to 80 guards depending on the event. VIP areas, backstage, vendor zones, parking lots, entry gates, medical stations. Each one needs coverage.
Local companies bid on these contracts months in advance. Phelps Security, which has been operating in Memphis since 1960, has been a regular provider at city events for years. Allied Universal, the country’s largest security company, typically picks up big-ticket contracts that require the kind of headcount smaller firms can’t deliver. Smaller firms fill in around the edges, providing guards for satellite events, after-parties, and private functions tied to the festival.
I talked to the owner of a Memphis security company with about 90 employees. He asked me to leave his name out of it. He said his company had signed a $47,000 contract for Barbecue Fest security in January. Deposit paid by the client, schedules built, guards assigned. When the postponement was announced in March, he kept the contract active and shifted his planning to September.
“When they cancelled it outright, that money just disappeared,” he told me. “The client isn’t going to pay for an event that doesn’t exist. And I already turned down other work for that weekend because I had the guards committed.”
He estimated that his total lost revenue from Memphis in May-related contracts, including private events that piggyback on the festival, comes to about $65,000. For a company his size, that’s not pocket change. That’s payroll for two weeks.
It’s Not Just Memphis in May
The festival cancellation gets the headlines, and it should. Memphis in May is the city’s signature event. The organization itself reported $1.795 million in projected losses from the cancellation. The hotels, restaurants, and bars along Beale Street and in the South Main district lose even more.
The security losses, though, go well beyond one festival.
The Memphis Grizzlies stopped playing home games at FedEx Forum on March 11 when the NBA suspended its season. That’s 15 to 20 home games that won’t happen this spring, each one requiring event security staffing. Memphis 901FC, the city’s USL Championship soccer team, was supposed to open its season at AutoZone Park in March. Those games are gone too. The Memphis Redbirds, the Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate, should be playing baseball at AutoZone Park right now. The minor league season is suspended indefinitely.
Every one of these events generates security work. Not just inside the venues. Private security firms handle crowd management on the streets surrounding FedEx Forum on game nights. They provide parking lot patrols. They staff the bars and restaurants in the Beale Street Entertainment District that see their biggest crowds when 17,000 Grizzlies fans pour out of the arena after a game.
Add in the corporate events, conferences, and private functions at the Renasant Convention Center (still called the Cook Convention Center by half the city), the Orpheum Theatre, and hotels like the Peabody and the Westin. All cancelled. All generating zero security revenue.
Counting the Damage
Let me try to put some numbers to this, because the aggregate picture is worse than any single cancellation suggests.
Memphis in May’s full festival season typically requires somewhere between 800 and 1,200 total security guard shifts across all events, based on conversations with three companies that have worked the festival in prior years. At an average billing rate of $22 to $28 per hour for unarmed event security, and average shifts of 10 hours, that’s roughly $176,000 to $336,000 in direct billing for security providers.
The Grizzlies’ remaining home schedule, assuming around 18 games that won’t be played, represents another significant block. FedEx Forum event security contracts vary, and the team handles some security in-house through its arena operations staff. Third-party security firms typically fill supplementary roles. Call it $80,000 to $120,000 in lost third-party security revenue across the remaining games.
Memphis 901FC and the Redbirds play smaller venues, and their security needs are proportionally smaller. Combined, the lost season probably represents $30,000 to $50,000 in security contracts.
Corporate events and private functions are harder to quantify because they’re spread across dozens of venues and hundreds of individual bookings. One security company owner who specializes in corporate event work told me he’s lost $92,000 in bookings since March 15.
When you stack all of this together, the Memphis event security market has lost somewhere between $400,000 and $600,000 in contract revenue since mid-March. Probably more. Some of these losses will never be recovered because event security is perishable: you can’t “make up” a cancelled May shift in August.
The Seasonal Workers Who Depend on Festival Season
There’s a human cost that the revenue numbers don’t capture.
Event security in Memphis runs heavily on part-time and seasonal workers. Plenty of guards treat festival season as their busiest period, picking up extra shifts at Barbecue Fest, Beale Street Music Festival, and private parties throughout May. For some, this work supplements a full-time security job at a warehouse or office building. For others, especially retired law enforcement or military veterans who do event security on the side, it’s their primary spring income.
A guard who works four 12-hour shifts at Memphis in May events, billed at $15 to $18 per hour on the guard’s end, takes home $720 to $864 for the festival weekend. That’s rent money. Car payment money. For seasonal workers who typically pick up 15 to 20 event shifts between March and June, the total loss could be $5,000 or more per person.
I talked to a retired Memphis police officer who has worked event security at Tom Lee Park for the last six years. He usually clears about $4,200 between Beale Street Music Festival and Barbecue Fest. This year, he’s sitting at home watching Netflix.
“I don’t qualify for unemployment because event work is intermittent,” he said. “And the stimulus check is nice, but it’s one payment. I usually count on this money every spring.”
What Comes Back, and When
Nobody knows when large-scale events return to Memphis. The NBA is exploring a bubble format for finishing the season, likely in Orlando, which means no fans and no local security needs. Minor league baseball may not play at all in 2020. Memphis 901FC might get a shortened season, or might not. The Orpheum has cancelled everything through the summer.
Memphis in May’s organizers have said they’re planning for 2021, assuming conditions allow it. That’s 12 months away. For security companies that built their annual budgets around festival-season revenue, 12 months is an eternity.
Some firms are trying to pivot. The same skills that make a good event security guard, the ability to manage crowds, de-escalate tense situations, maintain a visible presence, translate reasonably well to the COVID-era work that’s available now. Temperature screening at essential businesses. Capacity enforcement at reopened retail stores in the 89 Tennessee counties outside Shelby County’s lockdown. Mask compliance at grocery stores.
It’s not the same money. Event security contracts bill at premium rates because of the short-duration, high-intensity nature of the work. Standing at the door of a Walmart checking temperatures pays less and feels different. The guards know it. The companies know it.
One company owner put it bluntly: “Event security is the filet mignon of this business. What we’re doing now is ground beef. It pays the bills, and I’m grateful for it. I just hope people remember what filet mignon tastes like when this is over.”
Tom Lee Park will sit empty this May. No stages. No smokers. No crowds pushing toward the riverfront. The security teams that would have been there, scanning wristbands and watching for trouble, will be somewhere else entirely. Or nowhere at all.