The 2008 Super Bowl Business Profits

When the Super Bowl is mentioned, dollar signs light up in almost every city councilman's eyes. The Super Bowl website claims that the average economic impact of the Super Bowl on a host city is $300-400 million. Or maybe it's $400 and $500 million, as the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee predicted. It's a lot of money swirling around one event, but the Phoenix metropolitan area has a population of about 3.6 million people. How much local profit can come from a Super Bowl has never really been calculated, but one economist estimates a mere $50 to $60 million stays in the host city.

Don't hotels make a lot of money when 100,000 out of town fans arrive for a SuperBowl game? No. January and February are the height of our winter tourism season. It's not as though the rooms would be sitting empty this week. Some hotels were reporting lower than usual bookings for the weekends before and after the Super Bowl; possibly because some travelers decided that they would rather be somewhere else during the frenzy. The profit from higher prices on hotels flows into the corporation's accounts somewhere else. Some unexpected beneficiaries were the local contractors that were renovating hotels long before game weekend arrived.

Don't hotels and restaurants add lots of staff during the event whose salary and tips would spread out through the community? I checked the local want ads and saw no signs of hiring, and called some contacts at temporary agencies: no increase over last year's business. I know the police all over the valley are working extra hours to cope with the traffic and the influx of petty criminals - local taxpayers pay for the overtime, and we hope the sales taxes we collect from the fans pay for it.

I've been watching neighborhood businesses and the local dollar signs are looking dim. The team sports memorabilia at the local supermarkets was on sale at 50% off Saturday, and will be at 60% off (meaning no profit at all for the retailer) by Monday. There's nothing staler than yesterday's game results. The only real economic winners for sports memorabilia are the NFL teams that split the licensing fees among themselves, and the factories that produce the souvenirs.

Even worse, the so-called festivities around the game are making it difficult for a local business's usual customers to spend money. I often shop in an upscale mall that is near one of the team hotels, which has the added misfortune of being close to the big golf tournament, the FDR or BFD or something like that. Or at least I tried to shop. The mall parking lot was jammed with fans hoping to get a glimpse of their favorite player. So I went downscale to a nearby Walmart, crawling through the maze of detours that the golf tournament creates. Four humongous RVs were hogging most of one aisle because the cheapskate fans were using the parking lot as their campsite. Three media satellite trucks, none of them from local stations, were hogging some prime spots near the entrance because the golf tournament media lot was full. No money coming from them into the local economy!

The businesses closer to the football stadium are harder hit. I asked five friends who are unfortunate enough to live within a couple of miles of the stadium. They started avoiding the stadium area when the traffic flow was changed for the first pre-game event and and none of them will go near there until next weekend. That's almost a month of lost regular business, all for the sake of the few who own the teams, sell the commercials, and run the show.