Who Pays for Super Bowl Security? Why, Taxpayers, of Course!
The National Football League pays nothing.
The annual spectacle is nigh. Two days away, in fact.
I refer, of course, to Super Bowl LVI.
The gladiators (I mean, the Los Angeles and Cincinnati teams) will be beating their brains out (literally, sad to say) in the new SoFi stadium in Inglewood, California.
That’s the way, way, over-the-top facility that cost $5 billion in private funds (and counting) to build. (1)
Have you ever wondered about who provides Super Bowl security?
Local law enforcement, of course. This year, the Inglewood police chief is said to be in charge overall. (2)
“In addition to the Secret Service, numerous agencies are involved in protecting the Super Bowl, including US Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, FBI, Department of Defense, as well as other local agencies, such as the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and California Highway Patrol. CBP helicopters and Defense Department fighter jets will be available to help protect the air space.” (2)
That’s one heckuva list, isn’t it?
There are more. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Office of Intelligence Analysis, the Office of Operations Coordination, and the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) are involved. (3)
And the National Football League (NFL) is pitching in to help cover the costs.
Not!
“When a city bids on a Super Bowl, the NFL stipulates that pregame and day-of-game security will be incurred ‘at no cost to the NFL.’" (4)
Way out in the weeds, one finds an obscure (yet highly telling) document: a confidential 2013 set of Super Bowl requirements that the NFL imposed on Minneapolis. “In 153 pages of previously-secret bid specifications, the plan to have the NFL control many of the public and private aspects of the event is outlined.” (5)
It’s rather turgid and tedious reading.
Supposedly, it’s a set of “Bid Specifications and Requirements.”
It hardly reads, though, as an arms-length set of agreements, fairly bargained. Minneapolis seems more like a supplicant, making all kinds of expansive and expensive promises and concessions, and effectively pledging fealty to the NFL.
As for security costs, page 67 reveals the precise operative language: “The NFL requires that all necessary and recommended public safety and security deployments….will be provided at no cost to the NFL.”
There you have it. No cost. Zero. Zip. Nada.
To me, sports extravaganzas in general (e.g., Super Bowl, Olympics, building new stadiums) often are, for public entities, dicey and dubious financial undertakings.
States and cities can financially prostitute themselves all they want in order to land future Super Bowls (or Olympics, or whatever). Who am I to tell them what to do?
I will say this, though: we as federal taxpayers should not have to subsidize the National Football League.
If anything, it’s way past time for the NFL to chip in and at least defray the enormous costs incurred by the federal government each year for providing Super Bowl security.
Sources:
(2) https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/02/politics/super-bowl-security-federal-planning/index.html
(3) https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/02/09/dhs-partners-state-and-local-officials-secure-super-bowl-lvi
(4) https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/28/nfl-should-pay-super-bowl-security-not-federal-government/
(5) https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1184220-20140605190910.html#document/p36
Background:
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_0905_ops_sear-fact-sheet.pdf
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/02/03/secretary-johnson-highlights-super-bowl-50-security-operations
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hosting-super-bowl-worth-cities-000059204.html