National Football League owners will be handing out awards this week. The big prize, you ask? According to the NFL and the Super Bowl host city, the Super Bowl is an entity that allegedly brings hundreds of millions of dollars into the community. However, a good number of economic analysts suggest otherwise. That is a debate for another day. NFL owners plan to call to the stage the winning bids for the 2019, 2020 and 2021 Super Bowls. The favorites include the following: a municipality who generously contributed to a new football stadium to replace the old one in Atlanta that has barely passed the legal drinking age, more public handouts from Miami to Dolphins owner Stephen Ross for yet another upgrade at his stadium, and a return to Los Angeles (actually Inglewood), California where Rams owner Stan Kroenke is building a stadium-village with some public assistance from the municipality of Inglewood which borders Los Angeles.
The National Football League’s unofficial motto is “cash on the barrelhead.” The 2018 Super Bowl will be played in Minneapolis during the dead of winter. This is not ideal for the people who attend these sorts of events and like to play golf or enjoy a long weekend. However, Minnesota politicians decided to show the NFL that they are in the game by investing a large chunk of public money to help Vikings owner Ziggy Wilf build his facility which will cost more than one-billion-dollars. The NFL used to have a Super Bowl rotation, but as long as politicians are willing to spend public tax dollars for a private business (which is what the NFL really is), the NFL will award them with prizes such as the Super Bowl. The funny thing about taxing the public for a stadium is the fact that most of the public cannot afford NFL ticket costs nor is a stadium available for community use. NFL stadiums are a playground for the rich.
By Evan Weiner for The Politics of Sports Business.
This article was republished with permission from the original publisher, Evan Weiner.