Business View Magazine l November 2022

158 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 11 Bandwidth Logic. “We are just waiting for some more network providers to jump on, and that will help them immensely as well. We have all the infrastructure in place, and now it’s just getting those carriers on. Once they come on, the service is fantastic,” he relays. Although COVID brought its share of challenges, especially for those in the event and hospitality industry, Murphy believes that there was a silver lining. He asserts, “We appreciate each other more. I know we appreciate our staff a whole lot more, just from what they had to go through. It has brought our staff really close together because we’re survivors, and we’re going to continue to grow and make it better.” With 15 full-time and 275 part-time employees, Ford Wyoming Center brings job opportunities to the region not only through the venue but through jobs in the hospitality industry. Murphy explains, “The economic impacts that we bring to our community, which is anywhere between $25 and $30 million, also provides anywhere from 275 to 300 full-time jobs in our community. So not only do we have those people working for our building, but because of what we do, that person who works in a hotel or in a retail shop or a restaurant, they have a job because of it as well.” On the marketing side, Ford Wyoming Center relies on the partnership with Oakview Group, which connects them to 300 venues throughout the United States. “It really helps us with routing shows,” says Murphy. “We route with our sister buildings like Loveland, Colorado, Napa, Idaho, and we also have a booking deal in Billings, Montana, so we will work with them as well.” He admits that although national marketing is important for major events, local advertising and marketing are important for the venue as well, sharing, “At the end of the day the great majority of the people who attend our events are still from Casper. We focus on the local social media and the local forms of media, whether it’s radio, print, television, all across the board, and we’re very active in the community,” he adds. “We have directors who are in Rotary, we’re very active in Visit Casper, and we’re a high-level member for the Chamber of Commerce. I think all of that just flows into a comprehensive type of marketing structure that we have.”