OT: NFL Demands for Super Bowl Host City Are Outrageous
Found an article outlining the demands of the NFL for the Host City of the LII Super Bowl in 2018.
The demands are amazing and would make even Dave Brandon recoil in horror (ok, maybe not.../s...or not /s)....so many demands with the terms of "no cost to the NFL" appearing 150 times in a 153 page document.
Some excerpts and highlights of the demands:
There's even a section outlining a "familiarization trip" for the NFL, its sponsors, broadcasters and other partners 16 months before the Super Bowl, and the host committee is responsible for "all travel expenses" for the 180 people on that three-day trip.
And:
And the obligations set forth by the NFL from the city include many prudent ones dealing with security and operations, to somewhat ridiculous ones like bowling venues being offered at no charge, specific ATM machines that accept league-preferred debit and credit cards and team hotels televising the NFL Network a year before the game.
The Brand The Brand The Brand!
It's the NFL, a professional sports organization. No surprise here.
A non-profit professional sports organization.
Roger Goodell says +1 to you sir!
Yes, but it's not what most people think.
The assumed 'billions of dollars the NFL makes' aren't funneled through the non-profit. The non-profit portion only applies to the league's New York office and the 'non-revenue activities' directly attributed to them, such as membership dues, paying the home office staff, officials, etc. The estimated tax savings range from $100m per year to a little over $100m over 10 years, depending on who you believe.
The individual franchise organizations are not considered non-profit organizations.
I'm not defending the NFL, but I'd like to point out the major misconception of how the statement "the NFL is a non-profit" is true, it's not true in the way that 99% of people who hear that think. For as much play as this gets in the news, I think it's relatively minor compared to the legalized tax evasion committed by many tech companies who are not paying taxes on multi-billion-dollar war chests stored in Caymen Islands accounts.
The NFL's tax evasion is nothing compared to, say, Apple's or Pfizer's, but it still terrible that the "NFL League Office" is a non-profit which saves ~$10 million a year in taxes and pays its "non-profit" CEO (Roger Goodell) $35 million a year.
With that in mind, I'm fine if people get upset about it. Just like I'm fine that people are finally realizing the "non-profit" bowls, which pay their chairman $1 million+, are also a joke and a scam. I'll take whatever might lead to little victories we can get.
One thing that I find phenomenal - and perhaps this is me just looking at it through my work glasses - but they require 6 MVa of load just at the stadium and 5.2 MVa for the preimeter sites. To give everyone perspective, 11.2 MVa could pass for the day-to-day demand rating of a decent-sized distribution circuit with potentially thousands of customers of varied size. There are places in our system here where the only way to accomplish this would be to give the NFL a dedicated bus in the nearest substation. That's a lot of electricity.
A couple of years ago? (Seems plausible, anyway, but I might be delusional.)
It may very well be, and to be honest, what fascinates me more is the demand requirement on perimeter locations, not so much the stadium itself. Ford Field, for example, is about a 6 MVa primary service that is fed directly from a substation, but the area around it? I can almost guarantee that it is probably only 1-2 MVa demand save for Comerica, which is on another circuit anyway. Regardless, you're probably asking a prospective site to do a fair amount of upgrading of the distribution around a venue to accommodate the NFL, although some might be able to accommodate this already (The Meadowlands, for example, has an 11 MVa service for just the stadium - found that online).
so wondering - can they up the capacity temporarily to suit the NFL's needs - or is this more of a permanent upgrade? That they essentially are building a temporary accomodation for the NFL which will have oversupply post-Super Bowl?
Depends on what lines are already installed. If the lines going in can handle it, but the substation hookups can't then it isn't *that* terribly bad (though reconfiguring a substation is no small feat). But if the lines aren't sized to that load, then you have to run additional lines into the area which can get expensive, esp if the line have to be under ground.
Still wasn't enough last year...
As long as cities agree to these requirements in their Super Bowl bids, the NFL will keep making ridiculous demands.
played every Saturday at Michigan Stadium, because when David Brandon says.....
that a league made up of owners who habitually bend over states, counties and cities every 30 years to get a new sweetheart deal would have the Super Bowl of bending someone over for the Super Bowl of Sweetheart deals.
as much as i dislike the bowl system and the mustard colored blazers and the ilk of dave brandon corporateers, i will take it all over the NFL any day.
Its hard to say definitevly...
At least the individual franchises aren't having cities with crumbling infrastructures and bad schools build them luxurious new stadiums at tax payers' expense.
They are?
OK, well at least they aren't building those stadiums for just four games before abandoning them. Now that would be a big time dick move. Even the NFL is in awe of FIFA.
They are going away from Roman Numerals for Super Bowl 50 and 51, but they return in 2018.
So no L or LI super bowls, but they WILL have a LII.
Either I'm missing something obvious or this makes no sense.
just for SB 50....but I don't hear too well these days anyways.
Thought I had heard 50 and 51, but I guess L stands for loser was too much to handle for SB50!
which would seem to be more appropriate for the game 10 years later.
to get in and I don't mean L for Lions.
That would be Super Bowl LOL
is for a charity Bowling event.
As for electrical demands, does anybody recall the power needed for Michigan Stadium? Obviously it won't be nearly as much, but didn't Michigan stadium have a power failure a couple of years ago?
But anyway, rest assured that if a city management didn't like the terms of the contract they have two options. Negotiate some give and take, or walk away from the deal. As I understand it, as with the Olympics, most cities come out net losers, the economic impact not being enough and not having the residual effect that is hoped. Still, cities keep lining up to lose money... of course it's other people's money and by the time everyone realizes the loss, city managers have had their contracts renewed and city council members have been reelected.
If the demands are so "outrageous," why are so many cities still falling all over themselves to meet those demands?
Miami, New Orleans and Los Angeles/Pasadena have hosted 27 of 48 Super Bowls.
15 total cities have hosted a Super Bowl. The next 4 upcoming are in cities that have hosted before (Santa Clara being part of the San Francisco area.)
Because it isn't so much the cities as various politicians and power factions that push for it. It's not a great deal for any city as a whole.
...and should be banned.