Pandemic protocols limit the financial windfall of CFP title game,
The scene Thursday afternoon at Ocean Drive and 12th Street was exactly what local politicians, tourism officials and the College Football Playoff committee had in mind more than three years ago, when the 2021 national title game was awarded to Hard Rock Stadium.
A sun-splashed, postcard-perfect January day, turquoise ocean glistening, curious tourists in bathing suits peeking in as camera crews interviewed dignitaries and game organizers gathered around the shiny gold national championship trophy.
South Florida landed the dream college football matchup everyone has been waiting for, a national title clash for the ages — Alabama vs. Ohio State, both undefeated, two programs steeped in tradition and lore, 25 national championships between them, the Crimson Tide vs. the Buckeyes, Southeast vs. Midwest, coast-to-coast television appeal.
Any other year, with a game of this magnitude kicking off Monday night, South Beach, Wynwood and other tourist spots
Cities provided monetary sponsorship to help lure the national championship title game to South Florida, but COVID-19 has dampened the expected return.
TAILGATING IS PROHIBITED. THERE WILL BE NO PUBLIC PEP RALLIES, PARTIES OR CONCERTS. NOT EVEN MARCHING BANDS, MASCOTS OR CHEERLEADERS ARE ALLOWED AT THE GAME.
would be overrun by throngs of Alabama fans decked in houndstooth chanting “Roll Tide!” and sun-seeking Ohio State fans in scarlet and gray shouting “O-H-I-O!” The teams would be mingling with their supporters at pep rallies.
Area hotels, restaurants and bars would be packed. ESPN would have its studio set up somewhere along the beach, a sellout crowd would show up at Hard Rock Stadium and another 20,000 fans without tickets would tailgate in the stadium parking lots just to be near the action.
In 2013, the last time the stadium hosted both the Orange Bowl and the national championship football game, a record crowd of 80,120 fans attended, fans began tailgating 14 hours before kickoff and the economic impact to the community was estimated at more than $250 million.
But this is the COVID-19 national championship. Nothing will be quite the same.
A record TV audience might tune in for the epic battle, but the stadium crowd will be limited to 20 percent capacity — around 14,000 — and seating will be spaced out. Tailgating is prohibited. There will be no public pep rallies, parties or concerts. Not even the marching bands, cheerleaders or mascots are allowed at the game.
Like so many other things during the pandemic, the halftime pageantry will be virtual. A collection of 1,500 students from 200 college bands across the nation will perform a choreographed virtual halftime show, playing Beyonce’s “End of Time” on the stadium jumbo screens.
Tickets are so scarce that upper endzone seats were starting at $863 on Stubhub. Seats in the 72 Club were going for as high as $15,840 each.
“It is different this year, it’s a pandemic for everyone in the world, so why would we expect in college football for it to be different for us?” said Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff. “But here we are in a world-class city with a world-class stadium and world-class weather, so what could be finer? The fans and teams are excited to be here, ticket demand is off the charts and it’s going to be a great game.”
Though Miami will welcome just a small fraction of the tourists who would normally descend on the city for the weekend, the national college football championship is the largest event to come to MiamiDade since the Super Bowl in February, bringing much needed group business to hotels.
The head of MiamiDade’s tourism marketing agency does not view it as a missed opportunity.
“We will get priceless media coverage,” said William D. Talbert III,
CEO of the Greater Miami Conventions and Visitors Bureau, in reference to the glamour shots of the city expected to appear during primetime television coverage of the game.
During the 2013 national title game in South Florida, the TV audience peaked at 34 million. “We are sending a message saying we are safely open for business,” Talbert said.
He added that proving the city can pull off an event like this during a pandemic could help the city lure the championship back in future years.
For hotels that have been unseasonably vacant since reopening in June, the game offers a shot at among the highest occupancy rates and nightly room rates since COVID-19 shut their doors in March.
Miami Beach hotels are likely to see a bump in occupancy, according to Loews managing director Mutluhan Kucuk, who expects to see at least a 15 percent increase in bookings from fans. The hotel is planning specialized food and beverage offers and adding extra screens for game viewing.
He hopes the game — the 21st time the college football championship is decided in South Florida — will inspire more future travel to Miami-Dade.
“What excites me is the residual impact, the media coverage of Miami and Miami Beach,” he said. “That type of coverage, you can’t buy that, it would be very expensive.”
Eric Poms, CEO of the Orange Bowl and executive director of the 2021 Miami Host Committee, said:
“The past two weeks we had the Capital One
Orange Bowl with North Carolina and Texas A&M, and now the CFP National Championship with Alabama and Ohio State … four out-of-state teams in a challenging two-week window for tourism, so it’s a tremendous lift and infomercial for South Florida. Miami’s going to be the epicenter of the sports universe, and it’s going to be special to have this type of visibility when it’s much needed.”
The hotels that will benefit the most are the team host hotels, the InterContinental downtown and the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, which will see the brief return of traditional meetings and convention bookings. Before the pandemic, meetings and convention business made up more than half of their revenue.
Still, the smaller size of the game itself and cancellation of all ancillary events means even the host hotels won’t cash in the way they otherwise would. The teams cut their visits by one day
“That alone limits the ability for the hotels to really benefit from this type of an event, which we understand,” said InterContinental General Manager Glenn Sampert. “We want everyone to be safe and not pack into a football stadium.”
The InterContinental staff is still far smaller than its pre-pandemic level of 500 workers, but Sampert said the football championship has allowed the hotel to hire back an additional 75 to 80 people, bringing the total staff to as many as 150 for the event. The hotel has virtually no large group business booked for 2021 outside of the football weekend.
“There’s hope and expectation that may begin to change in the fall, but at this point what we expect is no one is planning those kinds of events today,” he said.
Josh Herman, vice president of marketing at the Fontainebleau, said the hotel has pivoted resources to attract leisure travel as large conventions remain mostly canceled for the first part of 2021. The pandemic has popularized last-minute bookings, which are still happening days before the big game.
“This weekend will definitely be bigger and much more successful than it would be without having a team here; that’s a given,” he said. “It will certainly outperform what we would have without them.”
Local governments from as far away as Palm Beach County have committed to financially support the game’s presence in South Florida through cash sponsorships that rely on taxpayer money.
In return, the host committee promised the game would bring the area positive media exposure and an influx of tourists willing to dine, drink and stay at local hotels. Many sponsorship packages were first arranged in 2017 and revisited last year.
Despite COVID-19 budget restraints, Miami-Dade County maintained its original $4 million cash sponsorship package, according to the host committee. The host committee originally requested $1 million from the city of Miami and remains in “active discussions with the Mayor and City Manager to work out a funding arrangement,” a committee spokeswoman said.
For now, the city of Miami, which will host one championship team at the Intercontinental Hotel, will not be sponsoring the game itself.
Miami Beach figured to be the epicenter of the game’s fan events and media broadcasts, but ESPN will not broadcast live from Lummus Park in South Beach due to the company’s COVID-19 protocols. Instead, the network will broadcast “pre-taped drone beauty shots of the city” during ESPN programs and during the game, a city spokeswoman said.
Still, Miami Beach is maintaining its $400,000 cash sponsorship of the game. During a City Commission meeting in November, some elected leaders appeared hesitant to approve the package, but ultimately the board approved it unanimously.
In an interview Thursday, Mayor Dan Gelber defended the city’s decision to support the event.
While it feels “a little off” to host 13,000 fans in a stadium at a time when Florida has recently reported single-day record numbers of COVID-19 cases, Gelber said the city committed to support the game in 2017 and will stand by its business partners.
“I think we have to sort of preserve who we are even as we work to protect people,” he said, referring to the city’s reputation as a tourist destination.
ESPN’s decision not to broadcast its TV shows live from Lummus Park is meant to prevent fans from congregating around the set. But Commissioner David Richardson said he was “confused” by the network’s concern, given that thousands of fans will be at the game itself.
“It sounds like we’re going to have 13,000 people in one place, which quite frankly alarms me,” he said.
Originally, the sponsorship package included $850,000 in rental waivers for use of the Miami Beach Convention Center and another $425,000 for city services and event fee waivers at Lummus Park.
The $400,000 payment was always included in the package. Under the reduced package, the city will offer $25,000 in services and $25,000 in event fee waivers at Lummus Park.
Most of those events and concerts in South Beach have been canceled, but College Football Playoff will set up a free open-air event space on Lummus Park, called CFP Beachwalk, between Fifth and 13th streets with “passive sponsor activations and iconic photo opportunities intended to allow fans a chance to interact with the Championship in a safe and socially distanced manner,” a spokeswoman said.
There is also a virtual replica of the CFP Beachwalk online, with digital Art Deco architecture and all, where fans can win prizes and watch a virtual concert by singer Jason Derulo.
“We believe this will be a huge economic impact for Miami Beach,” host committee Chair Michael Chavies told the commission. “We’re going to have tourists. We’re going to have hotel rooms open, and we’ll have guests in those hotel rooms. There will be tremendous media exposure too.”
Former City Manager Jimmy Morales, who oversaw the negotiations before leaving the job in December, told the commission in November that sponsoring the event could help stimulate the tourism economy.
“Is it going to be the activation we expected?
No. But right now we have none to speak of,” he said. “It struck me as a worthwhile investment to sort of maybe prime the pump and show we’re ready to do things.”
One thing that has not changed is the community give-back that event organizers promised. The CFP Foundation and host committee raised more than $3 million for the “Extra Yard Makeover Program” to upgrade tech labs at 24 area middle schools and community centers.
Britton Banowsky, the executive director of the CFP Foundation, said local school superintendents identified middle schools and community centers for media center makeovers that cost $120,000 each. They have completed five thus far, including one at the Chapman Center, a homeless facility in Homestead.
“We stepped up and decided to convert their education center into the same kind of center you would get in Coral Gables if you were affluent,” said Banowsky. They are also in the midst of a $400,000 project at Stranahan High School.
“I’m a little dismayed we won’t have a packed stadium on Monday night, but we’ve done our community events, have reached out to the children of Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties,” Chavies said. “The value of the give-back to those schools is the same as it would have been without COVID. Certainly, the economic impact of not having 65,000 people in the stands and however many thousands who normally come to be near the game, it will be different. But the value is there in give-back to our community.”
Though the event has shrunk in size and the economic benefit will be minimized, all three mayors lauded the marketing the event brings.
Gelber said amid the pandemic, he is looking forward to “a semblance of normalcy” in the form of the football game. He compared the college football championship organizers to those who organize Art Basel Miami Beach and South Beach Food and Wine Festival.
“This is a long-term partner,” he said. “We’re not going to abandon them on a single year.”
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez described the game as a chance to “showcase” Miami.
“We want people to know we are a safe destination, we are thrilled about it,” said Levine Cava. “We’re creative, always up for a challenge. The fact that we can cope is proof of how resilient we are.”
“It dovetails very nicely with this Miami tech and finance movement that we’ve been seeing over the past month,” Suarez said. “For me it’s sort of the icing on the cake for those who have been looking at Miami and been interested in Miami to showcase our city.”