Levi's Stadium produced $2B for economy to date, 49ers say
As Levi's Stadium enters its 10th season, a new report released Monday from the San Francisco 49ers says the venue has generated more than $2 billion to the local economy in Santa Clara County since it opened.
The city-owned stadium, which is managed by the NFL team, attracted more than 8.7 million attendees for approximately 155 major events and nearly 1,000 special or corporate events from July 2014 through July 2023.
“We have always seen Levi's Stadium as a powerful economic engine for this community and the region, and we're proud this report shows that over nearly a decade we have lived up to that potential and promise,” 49ers President Al Guido said in a news release Monday morning.
The 81-page report, which was commissioned by the team and compiled by marketing and research firm Sportseconomic, LLC, said $350 million went to the city of Santa Clara and the Stadium Authority through hotel and sales taxes, ticket surcharges, city parking fees and stadium rent.
In a news release announcing the report, the 49ers said this past fiscal year was one of the most successful in stadium history. Between April 2022 and March 2023, the team said the stadium generated $251 million in economic impact through 12 NFL games and seven concerts including Coldplay, Elton John and The Weeknd. During the same time period, the report also claimed the city made $3.2 million in the form of stadium rent and taxes.
Santa Clara city officials, however, have questioned in recent weeks whether the city is seeing any of that money. At a Santa Clara City Council meeting last month, city officials said that while the stadium raked in $8.8 million in profits for non-nfl events last year, no money from that tranche is going to the general fund because of litigation costs associated with the 49ers.
A city spokesperson declined to
comment on the report's findings, citing that city officials were still reviewing its contents.
Councilmember Kathy Watanabe, whose district encompasses the stadium, posted on social media Monday afternoon that the report was “more 49er stadium management propaganda.”
“If there was so much economic benefit, why is homelessness a problem?” she said. “Stadium management has taken millions of $$$ from SCUSD, City of Santa Clara and Mission Community College through tax appeal process.”
This summer, Levi's Stadium saw some of the biggest musical acts in the world make a stop in Santa Clara, including Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Ed Sheeran, who smashed the attendance record by drawing in roughly 80,000 fans for his Mathematics Tour.
The report analyzed 19 major events held at Levi's Stadium from Dec. 9, 2018, through July. The 2019 College Football Playoff National Championship game between the Clemson Tigers and the Alabama Crimson Tide on Jan. 7, 2019, was the stadium's biggest
revenue generating event of the 19 — bringing in $90.2 million in economic impact to the local economy with $64.1 million of that in direct spending. Researchers defined direct spending as dollars spent in the region relating to the event that would have been spent elsewhere. That includes lodging, rental cars, food and shopping.
Of the six concerts included in the report, Swift's Eras Tour on July 28-29 was the biggest local money maker, with a $33.5 million economic impact, including $23.2 million in direct spending.
The report used surveys and data gathering during events, as well as previous public research and government data to compile the information.
“The economic impact report shows that Levi's Stadium has been extremely successful in driving local economic impact in the surrounding community, far eclipsing the investment needed to build the stadium and operate it,” Sportseconomics, LLC President Dan Rascher said in the release. “Our study shows that events and operations of the stadium equate
to over 1,000 local full time equivalent jobs each year, over 1 million spectators per year and millions of dollars in revenues to various public entities, all of which wouldn't happen without the presence of the stadium.”
Roger Noll, an economics professor at Stanford who specializes in sports economics, told the Mercury News that while the report is “more carefully done than a typical impact study,” “it still is an impact study in that it does not measure the net benefits to Santa Clara, city or county, from having the stadium.”
Noll said that while the report shows that the benefit of the stadium is that out of town visitors — specifically 49ers fans — spend money coming to Santa Clara, it doesn't account for 49ers fans who spend money while attending an away game. To illustrate his point, Noll used a hypothetical example about a pair of siblings: one lives in the Bay Area and the other in Los Angeles. Both agree that when the other visits they will take the host to dinner.
“According to the study, this will increase incomes in Los Angeles and San Francisco by the amount the visitor spends on dinners, plus an additional amount via the multiplier effect, whereas if the host had paid for the dinner, there would be no effect,” he said. “Of course, the problem here is that who pays for a dinner cannot matter, and the total number of dinners eaten in both cities was not affected by the visits. Thus, it is misleading to pretend that family visits are an important source of income in both cities when the visits are symmetrical.”
The Stanford professor added that while the report talks about the psychic impact — or the emotional impact the area gets from hosting significant events — it doesn't account for costs, such as traffic congestion and noise for those living in the immediate vicinity of the stadium.
In the release, the 49ers also said that the Stadium Authority has paid off the majority of construction related debts more than 15 years ahead of schedule, saving the governing body that is made up of Santa Clara officials and councilmembers approximately $100 million in interest costs.
During the last fiscal year, Santa Clara paid off about $35 million of its debt on the stadium, leaving $245.2 million remaining. The stadium hit its debt peak in March 2014 at $653.4 million.
In a statement, Santa Clara Councilmember Karen Hardy called the stadium an “integral part of the Santa Clara Community — as an employer, a tax and revenue driver for the city and as a dynamic cultural attraction.”
“We have worked hard to ensure that Santa Clarans are benefiting from the Stadium, and this report is an encouraging sign that for the past decade we've been able to accomplish that,” she said.
In the coming years, Levi's Stadium is expected to host several more large scale events, including the 2026 FIFA World Cup and Super Bowl LX. In 2016, the stadium hosted Super Bowl 50, which had an economic impact on the region of $240 million, according to the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee.