On Tuesday, the Brentwood City Council agreed to direct staff to begin working on marketing strategies for tourism during major events — including sports events.
According to the future agenda item request, “That the City Council consider and discuss Vice Mayor Pierson and Council Member Maloney’s request that the City develop strategies to attract and serve visitors coming to the region for major sporting events.”
Councilmember Faye Maloney shared that the San Francisco Bay Area has big sporting events coming – Super Bowl and later this year the FIFA – but that Brentwood has not engaged with the Bay Area Host Committee which is basically coordinating with cities to provide different types of tourism for tourist coming for those sporting events.
“We are too late for the Super Bowl, but the whole month from June to July, while FIFA was is here, one of the things that we’d like to bring forward to all of you for discussion is to have a tourism strategy for the City of Brentwood that focuses on day experience tourism, not locals that are coming here. How do we do that with engaging our community and tourism stakeholders?”
Maloney stated she had been engaged with Harvest Time and would like to engage Brentwood farmers, local businesses, event organizers, the historical society to come up with a strategy during this time.
She noted day experiences for Morgan Hill – going on a farm, horse ride, have a picnic, wine experience. She said Brentwood could provide day experiences.
Vice Mayor Pa’Tanisha Pierson Davis shared the economic analyst for FIFA World Cup project that individual US host cities could see projections of $160 million to $600 million in economic activity – visitor spending, tourism, transportation, hospitality, retail.
She noted Brentwood could host a “Restaurant Week” to spur economic activity in the downtown and other parts of the city or U-Pick. Other cities have seen $500 million in economic impact. She called for the conversation to be immediate and expedited to return because the event is right around the corner.
According to city manager G. Harold Duffey, he said Brentwood has the product but needed to get the product out into the world. He suspected these organizations and cities had additional marketing help and needed to come back with how the other cities are doing engagement—potentially seeking additional resources.
Maloney added that the cities of Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill have already partnered with the host cities – she wanted to bring stakeholders together and share the product.
Maloney said she would like to have something returned to the council by February to begin planning for June.
Councilmember Jovita Mendoza called it a great idea as they could always use more tourism and increase traffic.
Pierson Davis wanted this to be an ongoing discussion for future events, not just the ones in 2026.
The council agreed to direct staff to prepare a tourism strategy that focuses on day experiences.
