Was Super Bowl LX an economic boon for the Bay Area?

On Saturday night before Super Bowl LX, crowds of football fans packed The Brit Sports Pub & Patio in downtown San Jose, overflowing to the sidewalk until the early hours of the morning.

“This is the time to make money,” said bar owner Jasbir Singh, who saw business jump 250% above normal last weekend.

Across the Bay Area, the Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara is estimated to have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the region’s economy, as thousands of visitors booked hotel rooms, shopped at local stores and dined at bars and restaurants. While some experts cast doubt on the eye-popping dollar estimate, officials have touted the big game as a clear boon for the region.

“We’ve done about $500 million of economic impact in the Bay Area,” Jed York, principal owner of the Super Bowl host team San Francisco 49ers, said last week. “Over 100,000 room nights, countless events in the communities — we’ve donated close to $10 million back in the community just this week, and that’s a part of the lasting impact.”

York’s figures come from a 2024 report commissioned by the Bay Area Host Committee, a nonprofit that helped bring the Super Bowl to Santa Clara. The report, conducted by Boston Consulting Group, projected the Super Bowl would provide a boost of between $370 million and $630 million to the region, along with $16 million in tax revenue for local governments. The committee said it plans to release a follow-up report on the Super Bowl’s economic impact in the coming months.

But Roger Noll, professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University, said such estimates are often grossly inflated.

“I just find them almost a joke because they’re so non-serious,” he said.

Noll noted that academic studies have found that estimates often overlook that a large portion of hotel and rental car revenue goes to national chains based outside the region. The estimates sometimes also fail to account for negative impacts, such as restaurants seeing fewer customers on game day when most people are watching at home. And they can ignore how Super Bowl visitors “crowd out” or replace spending by regular tourists and locals, who may avoid busy areas because of congestion or high prices.

After Santa Clara hosted its first Super Bowl in 2016, a separate host committee commissioned a report finding the economic impact on the region totaled $240 million, or about $325 million in today’s dollars. The authors of the report, from sports consulting firm SportsImpacts, said they used a conservative methodology that addressed many of the broader concerns raised by researchers.

Santa Clara officials said they aim to complete a detailed analysis of sales tax receipts from Super Bowl 60 later this year, though the exact timeline remains uncertain. Officials in San Jose and San Francisco, which also hosted many Super Bowl events and visitors, cited the Bay Area Host Committee’s reports in response to questions about dollar-amount estimates of economic impact.

While the full effects of the Big Game are still unclear, the economic benefits were almost certainly not shared equally across the region. Although the game was played in Santa Clara, many of the largest events and concerts were in San Francisco, and many visitors opted to book hotels in the iconic tourist destination about 45 miles north of the stadium.

According to the host committee estimate, between $250 million and $440 million was expected to go to San Francisco, compared to just $100 million to $160 million to Santa Clara County. The 2016 report found that 57% of Super Bowl revenues went to San Francisco, 12.3% to San Jose, 7.2% to Santa Clara, 7.1% to areas near San Francisco International Airport, 3.7% to Oakland and 12.6% to other parts of the Bay Area.

Even so, Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, said that spreading events and hotel stays across the region meant that a largely affluent group of football fans spent in different cities rather than only a small geographic area, as with most Super Bowls.

“There’s a clear net positive regionally when you think about the numbers here, no matter what kind of math any economist is doing,” he said.

During Super Bowl week, downtown San Jose saw 459,200 visitors, a nearly 25% increase from the same time last year, according to the city. Hotel occupancy was up 21% compared to the Super Bowl in 2016, while hotel revenue rose 45%. Meanwhile, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority set a new daily light rail ridership record, transporting more than 30,000 people to Levi’s Stadium and other related events.

But hosting a Super Bowl also comes with significant costs for cities, including additional law enforcement and security, increased transportation services and other event logistics.

In September, the host committee entered into an agreement with Santa Clara to reimburse the city an estimated $6.4 million in total Super Bowl expenses. The city received a $2.2 million advance payment from the committee in early January, and it aims to send its final reimbursement invoice by May 1.

Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor, who opposed the agreement over concerns about the committee’s ability to make the payments, said she expected the reimbursement estimate to increase to cover higher-than-expected law enforcement costs. When Santa Clara voters approved Levi’s Stadium in 2010, the ballot initiative included taxpayer protections that prevented the city from dipping into its general fund for stadium or event-related expenses.

“The party’s over, and we need to have our bills paid,” Gillmor said.

In San Francisco, officials set aside $4 million in city funds to cover Super Bowl costs. San Jose did not provide a cost estimate.

Despite her concerns, Gillmor described Super Bowl week as a success for Santa Clara. Beyond the immediate cost-benefit analysis, she saw the big game as an opportunity to promote the Silicon Valley city on a global stage. She hopes that by showing Santa Clara is equipped to host major events, including six World Cup matches this summer, it will attract more tourism and business investment for years to come.

Another benefit: an added sense of civic pride among the city’s more than 129,000 residents.

“Bad Bunny performed in Santa Clara, and we’re excited about that,” she said. “We’re going to be living on this for a while.”