Super Bowl: How much money is it really worth?

Super Bowl XLI brought more than 100,000 fans and $463 million in spending to South Florida, organizers said. Academics, however, warn against believing all the post-game hype.

BY DOUGLAS HANKS

dhanks@MiamiHerald.com

That's the final score for Super Bowl XLI according to a study released Wednesday by organizers. But the claim drew flags from academics questioning a Super Bowl's ability to generate that much of a financial boost.

More than 112,000 people traveled to South Florida for the Feb. 4 game, spending $298 million. Add in money spent during preparations -- and businesses spending their post-game windfalls in the local economy -- and the indirect benefit topped $463 million, according to the study by the Sports Research Institute in West Palm Beach.

Kathleen Davis, the study's author, pointed to a huge influx of affluent visitors spread out over one of the country's largest hotel markets. More than half of businesses polled said sales increased in the lead-up to Super Bowl, with the average gain approaching 40 percent.

''I can't say it was a perfect scenario,'' Davis said. ``But I can say a lot of people benefited.''

CRITICS DISAGREE

The report is sure to be a flashpoint in another contest that unfolds each year far from the Super Bowl sidelines: the sniping between game boosters and economists over the spending generated. Critics claim the National Football League overstates a Super Bowl's gains to encourage public subsidies.

A 2004 study of Super Bowls between 1970 and 2001, Padding Required, by two economics professors found the games generated a quarter of the dollars that boosters claimed. For last year's Super Bowl XL, Detroit's host committee released a study showing roughly $150 million in economic impact for the region. A rival study by Anderson Economic Group put the figure at just under $50 million.

Philip Porter, a University of South Florida economics professor, said $280 million in Super Bowl spending is too much for South Florida -- equaling 72 hours of total economic output throughout all of Miami-Dade County.

''In order to accomplish this, every sales line would have to double,'' Porter wrote in an e-mail. ``This is impossible. You'd have to sell twice as many cars, televisions, washers and dryers, etc., to accomplish this.''

Still, there's no doubt the game brought a major boost to the hospitality sector. Hotel taxes in Miami-Dade surged 15 percent in February and room revenues surged between 11 and 21 percent from Fort Lauderdale to Key West, according to state and industry data.

THE FINDINGS

The Super Bowl XLI report included a survey of nearly 3,000 attendees of the game and related events. Among the findings:

• Super Bowl XLI drew 112,403 visitors to South Florida. Of that, more than 41,000 did not hold game tickets. Roughly 75,000 people attended the Super Bowl.

• The average visitor spent $668 a day, compared to the current 2007 average of between $150 and $250.

• Nearly 10 percent of visitors arrived by private plane.

• A third of the local businesses surveyed boosted payroll during Super Bowl, and more than half saw sales increase an average of 38 percent. After Super Bowl, 21 percent said sales declined from ``normal wintertime levels.''

Pat Rishe, an economics professor at Webster University in St. Louis, noted that focusing on Super Bowl spending masks the event's true economic impact. Although the game drew huge crowds, it also kept other tourists away in South Florida's busy winter vacation season.

''No question the Super Bowl attracted more [economic] activity than otherwise would have been the case in Miami that weekend,'' Rishe wrote in an e-mail. ``But at the same time, Miami would not have been a ghost town either.''

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