ThinkProgress: When Tom Brady and Richard Sherman square off in Super Bowl XLIX on Sunday in Glendale, AZ, the city of 230,000 will be in the home stretch of its week-long hosting duties. But the huge expenses of becoming a magnet for big events in sports will linger.
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While the Super Bowl is a good time for those at the game or those watching from home, this article proves that there are serious repercussions involved with the Super Bowl for the host city. But the Super Bowl isn't the only event that produces all of these negative side effects for a host city. It seems to be that this is a serious issue with nearly all major host cities of a large scale event like the Super Bowl, for example the Winter and Summer Olympics. Host cities for the World Series and March Madness are in a similar situation where most barely break even or lose money. It’s interesting what attracts these cities to keep hosting these events when time after time, other cities have been in the red because of it. It is especially intriguing why Glendale decided to do it because of the negative situation with sports in the city. After further research, Glendale has been coined “the town ruined by sports”.
I don’t think that I really realized the point or the impact of this article until I read the comparison of the cost of living of the 125 homeless people to the cost of the actual super bowl itself. It’s hard to think about in retrospect how many lives we could be saving when really we are putting money into entertainment. The super bowl is a huge event that goes on every year with millions of viewers and a multimillion-dollar half time show with every effect under the sun. I know it would be pointless to say ‘let’s shed a few million dollars off out the super bowl and instead donate it to a charity- because nobody would listen to me. However, I think it would be interesting to see the look on people’s faces if someone had posed the question. Charity or entertainment? I think that it’s an interesting subject to divulge in.
One would think that being in a higher level of the food chain when it comes to spending money would actually know how to manage money instead of putting the people and the city in more debt than what it ought to be. With a small town like Scottsdale, I’m surprised that it’s done as well as it has. Sure they hosted the Super Bowl back in 2008, bit it was still for a loss on expenditures as to what revenue was brought in during the week of the 2008 Super Bowl. I guess when they go about figuring out what stadiums they want to use for consideration in situations like this, they do their best to make sure that the city would profit somehow, but looking at the numbers it’s not always a guaranteed thing. I haven’t really dealt with upkeep on a building, let alone a stadium, so there would still be plenty more to figure out to see more than just a few numbers on a page.
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