Over the weekend of Super Bowl LIII, nearly 1 million travelers passed through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport, over 1200 private jets landed and departed, and downtown hotel rooms tripled in value in preparation for the arrival of nearly 75,000 Super Bowl attendees and many more ticketless fans. Yet, despite these astounding statistics, it is difficult to determine whether Atlanta’s economy actually benefited from its successful bid to host this year’s Super Bowl game.
To convince the National Football League to schedule the game in Atlanta, the city’s host committee, made up of two locally-based CEOs and several state and local government executives, had to beat out competing cities by offering the sweetest deal to NFL’s owners. As a result, aside from basic considerations for Atlanta’s emergency preparedness, public safety, and hosting capacity, one of the main questions asked during the bidding was: how can the Atlanta host committee make the weekend benefit the NFL even more?
One of the best ways for a particular host city to woo the NFL is to build a shiny, new venue for the event. Since 1995, over $5 billion in public tax funds have been used to construct brand-new NFL stadiums in hopeful cities across America. Mercedes-Benz Stadium was a particularly expensive endeavor, costing $1.5 billion funded through Atlanta’s public sales tax. Although extravagant stadiums built for the Super Bowl will not become obsolete as quickly as their Olympic counterparts— the Atlanta Falcons and current MLS champion-winning Atlanta United will play in Mercedes-Benz stadium for years to come— many Atlanta citizens and journalists have wondered how long this $1.5 billion kickback to the NFL will take to create positive return on our public investment.
Aside from the stadium, the Atlanta host committee had to offer additional perks to seal the deal. Costing $46 million, the successful bid included obvious elements such as allocated security forces and parking infrastructure for visitors; yet many extravagant gifts to the NFL were also pitched and accepted, including $2 million vaguely billed as “expenses related to the game,” a $375,000 party for NFL-affiliates, free private VIP airport accommodations for the league’s “big shots,” and $2 million reimbursements for taxes that the executives or teams would pay during their time in Atlanta.
One may argue that these gifts to the NFL are a worthy investment considering that Super Bowl tickets averaged $8000 apiece in December 2018. However, the NFL gets to keep all of the money generated from both ticket sales and officially designated game-day parking lots. They also play in the stadium rent-free, and all Super Bowl related decorations in the city are paid for by the hosts. Additionally, in 2018, the Georgia State Legislature passed a bill to make Super Bowl tickets tax exempt, thus eliminating any possible earnings from ticket-sales and costing taxpayers an estimated additional $10 million in lost revenue.
The Sports Management Research Institute estimated $400 million in earnings for Atlanta which governor Nathan Deal and mayor Kasim Reed supported as a worthy reason for the tax break. While this sounds fantastic for the city, there are some problems with trusting these numbers; most importantly, the SMRI’s studies, also endorsed directly by the NFL, are known to publish hyperinflated results. Independent economists who have studied the impacts of past Super Bowls found that $400 million dwindles to only $30 to $60 million in real impact, not enough to be considered statistically significant after factoring in all of the costly investments the host cities put into the weekend. In another study, it was found that the Super Bowl’s host city actually ends up with a 5% negative coefficient of GDP after the big game.
Yet even if Atlanta doesn’t make any direct income off of the Super Bowl, the indirect economic impact will easily overcome the costs, right? Actually, for a city with an already vibrant tourist industry, it is difficult to determine a significant increase in economic activity as a result of the Super Bowl. For example, in 2017, Georgia’s tourism industry grew into a record-breaking $63 billion market, creating 460,000 new jobs. The greater-Atlanta area has been a tourist attraction for many years, thanks to attractions such as the Atlanta Zoo, Georgia Aquarium, World of Coca-Cola, plentiful museums and concert venues, and, in more recent years, the flourishing film industry. Compared to this thriving economy, the Super Bowl actually had a negligible impact on Atlanta’s tourist industry. Super Bowl LIII did not even offer as many jobs as expected; local citizens were encouraged to apply to be one of 10,000 “Team ATL” volunteers rather than paid workers. In fact, the fanfare occurring downtown over the weekend could have even stifled the local economy, as people might prefer to attend Super Bowl-sponsored parties and events, which profit the NFL and its partner corporations exclusively, rather than visit and spend money at the local nightlife. The majority of the money spent during Super Bowl LIII could then “leak” right back out of Atlanta’s economy as NFL, Pepsi, and hotel-chain executives and shareholders leave with the bulk of the profits.
To conclude, in a time when fewer people are tuning into the NFL at all, Atlanta, and all future host cities, should hesitate, especially when courting the Super Bowl leads to outrageous promises funded by taxpayers’ dollars. For Atlanta’s Super Bowl LIII specifically, only time can tell as future impact studies will start determining whether the benefits of hosting the big game outweigh the costs the host committee incurred when it sold our city to the NFL.
