More Super Bowl Lies

You absolutely cannot believe anything that is reported in the local news media when it comes to spending your tax dollars on sporting activities. The local news media is all gaga over a not so surprising report that Mayor Greg Ballard is going to make a push to win the Super Bowl for Indianapolis in 2018. Before the 2012 Super Bowl, local officials estimated the Super Bowl would have an economic impact of $150 million. Following the Super Bowl, CIB officials conceded the event cost the city a net loss of $1.1 million, which was about $200,000 more than officials had expected to lose. Actual revenues from the food and beverage tax, the hotel tax and auto rental tax only increased by $2.9 million over the same period from the year prior to the Super Bowl. My conservative estimate of how much Indianapolis invested in hosting the Super Bowl in 2012 was at least $50 million before it was all done and said. The fact is that most of the economic impact from the Super Bowl never enters the local economy; rather, it flows to the owners, players and others. The state and city, for instance, had to forego taxes it would ordinarily collect from such an event simply as a concession for hosting the Super Bowl. Other revenues were allowed to flow to the NFL instead of state and local officials.

What city officials claimed at the time was that hosting the event would have a spin-off effect of close to $300 million over a several year period of which there has been little or no evidence to date. Well, in all the excitement, the facts get lost on the media and folks who should know better. Professor Matt Will proves once again that he is completely lacking in any credibility when it comes to predicting the economic impact of public spending on sporting events. Check out this fairy tale he shared with WTHR's Mary Milz:

"It's a fantastic move," said University of Indianapolis business professor Matt Will. "The economic impact was more than we'd ever dreamed it would be."

More than 100,000 people came to Indianapolis during the week of Super Bowl XLVI, bringing an economic impact of nearly $300 million. Half of that was spent on hotels and shopping and 20 percent on food and drink.

"We brought $295 million dollars from outside the city into Indianapolis. That is an incredible impact, definitely something we should try to do again," Will said.

The $295 million figure Professor Will tosses out is total bunk. One can't help but ponder if he is getting some consulting money on the side which has totally warped any sense of academic credibility he might claim to possess. Fellow blogger Pat Andrews studied the tax revenues reported by the CIB over the past decade and figured out pretty quickly that all of the investment the City of Indianapolis has made in making the City a favorable place to host sporting events and conventions relied heavily on higher tax rates as opposed to growth fueled from additional spending by visitors to support its ever-growing budget. As she surmised, "[I]nflation accounts for nearly all, if not all, of the growth in several entertainment/tourism market segments in recent years." "The only thing growing beyond inflation is the amount of taxes being levied to feed the CIB," Andrews concluded.

indiana politics civil rights law

Any source