SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Super Bowl excitement is building in the Bay Area. But hosting the big game isn’t cheap.
Super Bowl 50 will not be without costs to San Francisco taxpayers. The city projects it will spend nearly $5 million in general fund money to augment city services, ranging from public transportation to police to fire.
That is to accommodate the estimated 1 million people that will take part in the weeklong series of events.
“We know that from sales tax, hotel tax, business tax, we expect direct revenue back to the city and county of San Francisco to provide the very services and to pay for those,” Mayor Ed Lee’s spokesperson Christine Falvey said.
The city points to New Orleans, which brought in more than $10 million in sales and hotel tax in 2013. And Indianapolis that brought in nearly $7 million dollars in 2012.
“We are confident that the city will be in the black at the end of this, meaning we will generate tax revenue but we will also generate significant economic impact for our workers here,” Falvey said.
City officials said that could be hundreds of millions of dollars, and they point to Phoenix, which generated more than $700 million dollars in the 2015 Super Bowl and New Orleans, which generated nearly $500 million dollars in the 2013 Super Bowl.
“I just don’t believe a single dollar of taxpayer dollars should be spent on a private marketing party,” city supervisor Jane Kim said.
While she’s all for improving San Francisco’s tourist economy, some like Kim oppose the city spending $5 million out of its general fund for Super Bowl 50 events.
“It could be spent on city services, on affordable housing, services for the homeless,” Kim said. “Five-million-dollars is two navigation centers for our homeless residents, and on top of that, it’s only a 30-second commercial for the Super Bowl. They can easily pay that amount.”
Kim now plans to author a resolution to push the mayor to get that money back.
“Santa Clara got the super bowl,” she said. “We got the Super Bowl traffic jam, and yet, Santa Clara is getting their costs recouped. And we believe that we should get the same.”
“We set up the event the way we set up events like pride, like Chinese New Year,” Falvey said. “We provide basic city services around large, free public civic events, and that’s the way we set up this one. The mayor believes it was not only financially responsible but a very strategic investment in the economy of San Francisco.”
Both the costs and revenues are estimates, and that means we really won’t know for a couple of months whether the Super Bowl ends up bringing the city revenue, or costs them quite a bit of money.