Is The Super Bowl Really Worth Hosting?

Financial impact on cities varies. How would it affect San Diego?

The number one argument people make for hosting a major event like a Super Bowl is: Economic Impact.

The overwhelming belief among the masses is the exposure and tourism dollars that flood in to a community far outweigh the costs of putting on the event. However, research from San Diego-based Competitive Edge Research & Communication suggests that is not always the case.

“Host cities tend to count on the massive amount of Super Bowl media coverage to generate interest in their city as a destination,” said Competitive Edge Research & Communication President John Nienstedt. Some communities even hope the exposure will prompt businesses to move to the area to help offset the costs.

Competitive Edge has been studying the image effect a Super Bowl has on the host city since 2003 (the last time the game was in San Diego). So, how did Glendale, AZ do with generating interest in its cozy little desert town after hosting Super Bowl XLIX, which had the largest TV audience in American history, with an estimated 184 million people watching?

Not so good.

“In this case,” said Nienstedt, “there were so many references to the state of Arizona as well as the neighboring city of Phoenix that viewers didn’t make a positive connection with Glendale.”

In fact, if anything, fewer people across the country had an impression of any kind about Glendale after the big game than they did before it, and the state of Arizona overall saw little to no change in its national reputation.


(Chart courtesy: Competitive Edge Research & Communication)

In its research, Competitive Edge suggests multiple references to the state in general, including the Grand Canyon and Sedona, stole some of Glendale’s thunder.

Glendale did report its hotel rooms were completely sold out, and on game day its restaurants and bars were packed from sunup to long after sundown, so there is some kind of economic impact that will be sorted out in the coming weeks.

Now, any Super Bowl hosting debate must eventually lead us back to San Diego. It’s been 12 years since the NFL’s biggest spectacle was held in our town. Again, one of the main arguments for building a new stadium is to host major events like the Super Bowl. Will that payoff be worth it?

Alas, the Glendale situation does not help much. It’s a solid 20-minute drive away from Downtown Phoenix, so unless Chula Vista jumps back in to the fray to be a stadium site, this is an apples – oranges comparison.

However, I was in Arizona for eight days. I can tell you, with zero hesitation, Downtown San Diego is already in much better shape to handle the influx of people that comes with a Super Bowl.

Most tourists, and even many locals, descended on Phoenix, where the NFL set up its main entertainment for game week. The NFL Experience, Radio Row, Super Bowl Central, Media Day, all of it was in Phoenix, a city with next to no night life. In a development that will forever befuddle me, only a handful of the restaurants and bars stayed open past their regularly scheduled 11:00 p.m. or midnight, even as thousands of people with the munchies wandered the streets at 1:00 in the morning like some sort of Walking Dead, only instead of human flesh they craved nachos.

The Gaslamp is used to Comic-Con and can easily welcome (eventually, hopefully, possibly) crowds from Padres playoff games at Petco Park. With a Downtown stadium, people coming to the game can park their cars at the hotel and forget about them for a week because everything is within walking distance. The game announcers would be raving about the setup as TV cameras showed the pristine skies and perfect weather while the Northeast is covered with three feet of snow.

If that doesn’t drive tourism, I don’t know what will.

Heck, all we have to do it look back at that last game in San Diego, at rusted old Qualcomm Stadium in 2003. That was the first year Competitive Edge conducted its image study. It found that 8-percent of people watching had a better view of our town after watching the game than they did before watching it.

Most people have a pretty good opinion of San Diego already, so the benefit comes from simply increasing its visibility. As Nienstedt said in the inaugural report, “… the Super Bowl can take a city with a lot of positives – like San Diego – and lift it up.”

If that same 8-percent figure were to be in place for this year’s TV audience (184 million in the United States alone), that means 14,720,000 people would have their eyes opened to the awesomeness of San Diego.

Now, that seems like a pretty good reason to take a look at a stadium, don’t you think?

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