Chiefs, 49ers stay in pricey hotels, and taxpayers get the bills
■ Miami-Dade’s budget director said the county agreed to cover the hotel rooms as part of a $4 million contribution to the local Super Bowl effort. The cash subsidy has been public for months, but what’s new are details on where the money goes.
After Super Bowl organizers booked $1 million worth of rooms for National Football League players at two pricey Miami hotels, Miami-Dade’s government got the bills.
Miami’s Super Bowl Host Committee recently sent invoices totaling $1 million to the county’s budget office from the J.W. Marriott Marquis hotel downtown and Aventura’s Turnberry resort to cover an NFL requirement for subsidized rooms provided to players earning millions for teams owned by billionaires.
Miami-Dade’s budget director said the county agreed to cover the hotel rooms as part of a $4 million contribution to the local Super Bowl effort, one of many tax-funded concessions to the most popular and wealthy sports league in the country.
“These are basically things we have to do to get them to come,” said Rodney Barreto, the chairman of Miami’s Host Committee, a nonprofit formed to compete for the Super
Bowl and handle local organizing duties, including securing tax dollars for the effort. “If we’re not doing it, another city is.”
Miami-Dade’s $4 million cash subsidy of the Super Bowl has been public for months, and was approved by county commissioners in a string of budget votes that began in 2017. What’s new are details on where the money goes, and what the NFL refuses to pay for as it stages the most profitable event on its television schedule.
Jennifer Moon, the deputy mayor overseeing the budget office and Super Bowl funds, confirmed Miami-Dade was covering the $1 million expense for the team hotels. She said the agreement with the nonprofit Host Committee allows Miami-Dade to cover the hotel expenses under a provision that charges the committee with “ensuring the teams stay in Miami-Dade County.”
Because the county agreement with Super
Bowl organizers requires receipts and reimbursement payments, a large chunk of the committee’s spending flows through Miami-Dade’s accounting arm. A portion of those invoices, obtained through a public-records request, offers a detailed look at some of the costs borne by local governments and what the NFL receives for free.
The expenses offer a measure of the NFL’s leverage over local political leaders as the league holds out the carrot of Super Bowl exposure and travel in exchange for concessions and promises of free police coverage, waived permit fees, comped rental agreements and even cash payments.
“It’s a decision each community must weigh,” said Brian McCarthy, the NFL’s vice president of communications.
He said the league asks for the same sort of incentives and waivers that other large high-profile events, such as political conventions, seek when selecting event sites. “There is no shortage of communities interested in hosting a Super Bowl, which is good indication that it’s a good investment. There’s no question the economic benefits outweigh the costs. It’s very, very competitive.”
Miami-Dade agreed to cover the Host Committee’s $370,000 bill for Tuesday night’s media party at the county-owned PortMiami. About 5,000 members of the press are expected for the three-hour event that begins at 7 p.m.
Another significant cost center for local Super Bowl organizers is the NFL itself. The Host Committee recently sent Miami-Dade a Jan. 7 invoice from the NFL for $1 million. Marked PAID in ink, the bill included a handwritten notation “Bid Requirements.” Moon said the county would cover that cost as part of an agreement to reimburse portions of the money the committee is required to give the league. “We know they have an obligation to pay the NFL,” Moon said.
A projected Host Committee budget submitted to the county in November 2018 has a $12.5 million category of “Requirements.” No expenses are itemized in that portion of the Host Committee’s
$24 million budget, the only portion not to include spending details.
The county receipts show the Host Committee’s spending started in 2016, when the NFL awarded Super Bowl 54, but picked up steam a year ago at Super Bowl 53 in Atlanta. A delegation of Miami-Dade VIPs traveled to the game, including Mayor Carlos Gimenez and officials from the cities of Miami and Miami Gardens.
One reimbursement request to the county included dozens of receipts from the Atlanta trip, including for airline tickets, meals, and Uber trips. A handwritten notation listed an expense of $12,377.41 for a “watch party” that had “Dade officials in attendance.” On Monday, Moon said Miami-Dade declined to reimburse the committee for the Atlanta trip, saying that wasn’t considered a promotional expense for the 2020 Super Bowl.
The Host Committee also tried to bill the county $46,000 for a two-day “familiarity” trip in Miami in late 2018 attended by NFL sponsors, hotel and restaurant bookers and other executives involved in travel decisions for the Super Bowl. The trip culminated with a pricey Nov. 4, 2018, event on the South Beach waterfront: $6,000 spent at Smith & Wollensky steakhouse. The Host Committee submitted that receipt to Miami-Dade as part of a reimbursement request last March.
Moon said the county also rejected that request as not pertaining to “marketing and promotion of the local brand.” The county couldn’t provide details Monday afternoon on when the expenses were rejected.
It’s not known how much Miami-Dade’s Host Committee agreed to pay the NFL for securing Super Bowl 54. The bid package used to win the game in 2016 from franchise owners has not been made public. Miami-Dade says it doesn’t have a copy, and so can not produce one through a public-records request.
While the Miami terms remain a secret, other bid packages from past Super Bowls have become public and revealed the full scope of NFL perks.
For example, Atlanta’s $46 million bid for the 2019 Super Bowl included an estimated $2 million to reimburse the NFL and its teams for any state or local taxes they paid in connection with the event, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In Minnesota’s bid for the 2018 Super Bowl, state officials calculated that tax breaks on Super Bowlrelated tickets and parking receipts cost the state $9 million and local governments $1.3 million in potential revenue, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
For the Miami area, there’s no single estimate of the direct cost for local governments. The county documents include a projected budget for the Host Committee prepared in November 2018 that has about a third of the money coming from governments.
That includes the $4 million from Miami-Dade, plus $700,000 combined from Broward and Palm Beach and $750,000 combined from Miami and Miami Beach. The statefunded Florida Sports Foundation was expected to give
$1.5 million, and another $1 million was budgeted from the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, which relies on hotel and restaurant taxes for the bulk of its budget.
While private sponsor dollars and special hotel fees account for most of the Host Committee’s budget, the Super Bowl relies on donations from local governments to put on the event.
Miami expects to cover at least $3 million worth of Super Bowl costs tied to extra hours by city staff. About $2 million of that comes from additional police costs, according to a summary obtained through a public-records request. The city also plans to cover about $360,000 in garbage-collection expenses for the free Super Bowl Live event underway this week at Miami’s Bayfront Park, and $72,000 to clean city roadways in advance of the game.
Miami Beach agreed to waive about $1 million in fees, most of it rent at the city-owned convention center that’s home to the NFL’s Super Bowl Experience expo that’s open through Saturday. Tickets are $20 each, and the NFL says it donates profits to local communities through park improvements and other “legacy” projects.
Miami-Dade’s expected donated services are worth almost as much as its cash contribution for the Super Bowl. The $4.5 million budget of “in-kind” contributions includes waived permit fees and the salaries of two executives at the mayor’s office on loan to the Host Committee. Most of the costs come from the county’s police department for extra duty ahead of an event that demands extensive security for its perceived vulnerability to terrorist attacks.
While the Dolphins and other teams pay up to $50 an hour for off-duty police and regular-season games, Miami-Dade is donating police time for the NFL’s Super Bowl. Miami-Dade police estimated a
$2.9 million cost tied to the event.
Alex Muñoz, the longtime county administrator who runs Miami-Dade’s Animal Services department and serves as the government’s point person for the Super Bowl, said the county’s support of the NFL helped make Miami the league’s top Super
Bowl choice. Sunday’s game will be the 11th for the Miami area, a new record for the NFL.
“We understand how important it is for the NFL to want to come back here,” Muñoz said. “To kind of take the local-government piece off the table [as a potential problem], we do that for them.”
The county’s estimated police costs were detailed in a spreadsheet sent in March to Muñoz. It shows $80,000 for dignitary protection, $173,000 for police escorts, and $1.1 million in overtime on game day.
Police also get deployed to the team hotels, according to Miami records. The city police estimate of costs includes $132,000 of payroll costs for the Marriott Marquis under the category “NFC Team.”
For their week-long stay in Miami, 49ers players were assigned rooms at the Marquis, where rooms are selling for $500 a night the weekend after the Super Bowl. In August, the downtown Miami hotel billed the Host Committee $222,609 as a deposit for an unknown number of rooms. The committee sent that invoice to MiamiDade for reimbursement.
For their Super Bowl stay as AFC champions, the Chiefs will enjoy more cloistered surroundings at the Turnberry resort, which is also part of the J.W. Marriott Marquis chain. Rebranded the JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort and Spa two years ago, the former Turnberry Isle property sent the Host Committee a pair of invoices for two deposits in September and October. Combined, they equaled $777,391, according to the bills submitted to MiamiDade.
In all, that amounted to exactly $1 million in hotel costs covered by the Host Committee and set to be reimbursed by MiamiDade. That’s slightly more than the $900,000 that Miami-Dade’s Homeless Trust agency reported spending last year to provide hotel and motel rooms for families experiencing homelessness.
Barreto, the Host Committee chairman, said the NFL required the $1 million subsidy for player lodgings but that anything over that — including food and drink — is covered by the league or its franchises.
“Maybe the winning team might want to go a little crazy,” said Barreto, an owner of the Coral Gables lobbying firm Floridian Partners, which represents the Miami Dolphins. “That’s the beauty, because you cap a lot of these things. If you guys want to go spend a boatload of money, that’s on you.”