Who will pay for Eagles’ parade?

Taxpayers often are left with bill for celebration

The Philadelphia Eagles championship parade will start at the corner of Broad Street and Pattison Avenue on Thursday morning, weaving 5 miles north through the heart of downtown. Fourteen jumbotrons will be erected at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Forty food trucks will set up along the route. There will be 850 portable toilets.

And it all comes with a significant price tag.

In the frenzy of a championship celebration, it’s easy to forget about the necessary costs that make it all possible.

Parade routes are cleared. Stages are built. Police officers, emergency medical technicians and other city staff are paid to provide support for the event. And afterward there are crowds to thin, trash cans to empty and hundreds of pounds of confetti to sweep.

The entity that pays for a championship parade — taxpayers, the team, third parties or some combination therein — can vary and sometimes lead to prolonged negotiations.

A review by USA TODAY of recent championship parades found that the costs of celebrations range from the low six figures to, according to a Chi

cago Sun-Times report, more than

$2.5 million.

“It’s likely that this has a really important, unexpected impact on (city) budgets,” said Brad Humphreys, a professor of economics at West Virginia University. “You can’t plan for these things. It’s not like you can build into your city budget, ‘ Oh, we’re going to have the Super Bowl parade.’ ”

In at least one recent case, funding for a championship parade led to conflict between the title winner and its city.

At the Golden State Warriors championship parade last summer, owner Joe Lacob promised the cheering crowd that he would cover all the costs of the event, which team spokesperson Raymond Ridder told The East Bay

Times were expected to be about

$4 million. (Ridder later clarified that most of those costs did not involve government agencies.)

Three months later, the newspaper reported that the Warriors had received an invoice from the city of Oakland for more than $1 million and had not paid it, while Ridder said a final amount had not been agreed upon. Eventually, the Warriors agreed to pay

$786,988, even though they claimed it was more than double the original estimate provided by the city.

“Most American cities cover the majority of the expenses associated with victory parades,” the Warriors said in a statement. “We have made this decision despite our disappointment with the process and the large disparity between the two estimates.”

Oakland spokesperson Karen Boyd confirmed that the Warriors paid the amount in full. The team did not respond to emails seeking additional comment.

USA TODAY contacted the 12 cities that have hosted at least one championship parade over the past four years and found that, in most cases, city governments — and, by extension, their taxpayers — do pay at least part of the bill.

Cleveland, for example, covered more than $608,000 in costs during the Cavaliers celebration in 2016, city spokesperson Daniel Williams confirmed.

The San Antonio Spurs parade cost more than $433,000 two years earlier, though city spokesperson Thea Setterbo said more than $66,000 was funded by parking and concession revenue at the Alamodome.

“We’ve hosted multiple sports parades lately ... and consider the costs part of our regular course of business,” Pittsburgh spokesperson Tim McNulty wrote in an email when asked about the costs of the Penguins championship parades in each of the past two years. “We close the streets and provide public safety protection. The teams provide the rest.”