Apple, Other Tech Companies Give $2 Million Each to Cover Taxpayer Costs of Super Bowl 50

[snberk103]

It's crazy that the biggest football event would need that much in taxes from a host city

----------

NFL should pay it all since they don't even pay taxes

It's not the game that the taxes are being spent on … it's managing the massive crowds that will be converging on the stadium, closing streets, cleaning up garbage, taking care of the after-game parties fallout, etc etc.

Vancouver BC has the same problem during it's Firework Competition nights…. a quarter of a million people from the entire region show up to watch the event on a couple of beaches. Most of the people come from outside the city, and them bring booze and garbage with them.. which the city gets to clean up. Plus they need to close entire neighbourhoods to car traffic. The event itself is 'free'… but the impact of all those people is not. I suspect that it's similar in SF. The difference being that the Fireworks thing is 4 nights (@ quarter million people each night) over two weeks.

 

[thehustleman]

It's not the game that the taxes are being spent on … it's managing the massive crowds that will be converging on the stadium, closing streets, cleaning up garbage, taking care of the after-game parties fallout, etc etc.

Vancouver BC has the same problem during it's Firework Competition nights…. a quarter of a million people from the entire region show up to watch the event on a couple of beaches. Most of the people come from outside the city, and them bring booze and garbage with them.. which the city gets to clean up. Plus they need to close entire neighbourhoods to car traffic. The event itself is 'free'… but the impact of all those people is not. I suspect that it's similar in SF. The difference being that the Fireworks thing is 4 nights (@ quarter million people each night) over two weeks.

I know it isn't the game itself, but still

 

[JAT]

I give up. The poor use of wording in this thread is driving me crazy. Not to mention the standard lack of knowledge.

Bye, folks.

 

[snberk103]

I know it isn't the game itself, but still

I don't any of the details of the actual deal between SF and the NFL, so this is all just conjecture. However it is based on personal experience with the way Vancouver does things.

Generally a city decides that their cost of hosting an event is an investment in the city's overall economy.

SF may have decided that hosting the Superbowl is good for tourist and convention 'branding'. This will put SF front and centre in the US media for a lot of people - and also some international exposure. It has been shown that the tourist and convention traffic increases after hosting an event like this. It's not as big as the Olympics or a world Expo.. but it's something.

The increased jobs during the event itself. There will be tens of thousands of people in town for the event (I'm guessing at the number, but I'm sure the city has it somewhere on their website). Those folks are going to need hotel rooms, food and liquor. They're going to go shopping, and they're going to see the sights. There is going to be a short intense economic spike that weekend. The usual rule of thumb (iirc) is that every new $1 in direct spending equates to about $7 in spinoff economic benefits. With the state and city getting sales sales tax and income tax from that spending.

The massive logistics of broadcasting the Superbowl means that there are thousands of technicians and journalists in town. See the benefits of the paragraph above... plus add the benefits of needing to rent broadcast suites, lights, sound equipment, hire local talent, etc etc. Most of that stuff will be imported from the home HQ - but there is always the stuff you left behind that you need to rent now, whatever the cost. And the local talent that is cheaper to hire in town rather than bring and pay and house for the weekend.

Then there are the thousands of out-of-town police and security personnel who will be in town. They all need to be housed and fed. And when not on duty they will be shopping and seeing the sights too - but probably not too much of it... they'll be busy keeping people safe.

If SF has done their math correctly, and not made overly optimistic assumptions they will come out way ahead on the deal... even without the tech corp. contributions.

Where a city gets into trouble is when they assume that they will reap the maximum benefit on each spinoff, and then underestimate the real costs. I have no idea how good or not SF City Hall is...

 

[Gasu E.]

Glad to see NFL fans overseas. Thank you!

Would be great if someday there was an EFC for Europe. 16 teams in the conference like the AFC and NFC. Four divisions based on geography. Doing it that way would reduce travel costs as there are only a few inter-conference games per season for each team. Could even increase the season to 18 regular season games and 2 preseason so that it's more likely that conferences will mix since there would now be three. Only thing is 16 expansion teams would be a monumental task, and it would be hard to find a large source of NFL-caliber players at first since it's not a common sport in Europe that kids play since youth or strength train for. For now it's only a dream but I would love to see expansion. It would definitely inject some much needed variety into the league. They would also have to rework the playoff system as you'd end up with a three-way Superbowl.

It wouldn't work that way. It would start off as a separate league, more of a minor/development league, sponsored by the NFL.

 

[Gasu E.]

American leadership noticed this very early in the promotion of the sport and hence why baseball was promoted (trains well for hand grenade throwing and quick reactions to enemy trench movements) instead of the pacifist sport of soccer.

There are so many things wrong with your statement I am indecisive about where to begin. But let's start with the obvious that trench warfare is about the most static form of war there is, and involves less "movement" or "quick reactions" than almost any other kind.

Then there is the fact that "Base-ball" had its great upsurge in popularity in the period 1870-1900, before hand grenades were commonplace.

Of course there is the whacked notion that "American leadership" was actively promoting Baseball during this period, whatever the reason.

I didn't notice any emoticon indicating that this was tongue-in-check, as it was actually a pretty good lampoon of a paranoid, loud ignoramus. If intended as humor, this was pretty funny. If not, pity is the appropriate sense.

----------

The source is FIFA. I no longer have the link handy but you should be able to find it as easily as I did with a little looking around.

"Soccer" is easily the most popular youth sport in the USA, as any American parent is well aware. Nearly every girl plays organized soccer at some point, and a healthy share of boys as well. Note that this is borne out in the prominence of the USA in international women's Football. Our girls can beat your girls any day.

----------

I give up. The poor use of wording in this thread is driving me crazy. Not to mention the standard lack of knowledge.

Bye, folks.

Buh-bye! You take care now!

 

[Gasu E.]

Go back to your Global warming protests or learn real history.

If you actually knew what you were talking about, you would have provided a credible source. The fact that you responded instead with an insult is a dead-giveaway.

May I respectfully suggest you return to that bridge you live under? I'm sure it is a nice, cool, shady, damp welcoming place for your type of individual.

 

[snberk103]

And you my friend have been slogged into the rewritten history and origin of British sporting games.
.....
American leadership noticed this very early in the promotion of the sport and hence why baseball was promoted (trains well for hand grenade throwing and quick reactions to enemy trench movements) instead of the pacifist sport of soccer.....

Um, no....

There are so many things wrong with your statement.....
Then there is the fact that "Base-ball" had its great upsurge in popularity in the period 1870-1900, before hand grenades were commonplace.
...

Interestingly enough, baseball was initially developed in New England, New York, and South Western Ontario - Canada. There is a document in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame that recounts a game played in Ontario in 1838 though like all baseball games played at that time the rules were informal, each town having it's own set of rules, and didn't much resemble what we now know as baseball.

Canada at the time was British. So in CFreymarc's version of history, there would have been British Colonial office promoting soccer to keep the locals pacified, and baseball to teach them how to fit a war that was still 80 years in the future.

Also keep in mind that baseball descended from Cricket - a game in which throwing accuracy is very much a skill, as is catching the ball without the benefit of padded glove. Which would have been a very handy skill to have - catching hand grenades during the war... had there actually been any relationship between the sport and trench warfare.

It is one of the reasons that the NFL and baseball have such a hard time gaining much traction in the UK, imho. The Brits can barely recognize two of their national past-times underneath all of that protective padding.

 

[sofila]

Soccer can be played:
-almost everywhere: field, beach, stadium, street or a corridor etc
-almost from anyone: kids, boys, men, girls, mixed
Rules are the same all over the world
Basic requirements:
-1 ball (small, big, yellow, plastic, leather: doesn't matter)
- from 1 to 50 players
- 2 objects defining the size of the "goal": may be part of the landscape, natural, artificial. Two socks could do the job.

Guess why they call it an universal game

 

[CFreymarc]

And.... thank you.....

----

I don't watch either of the footballs... Too slow. Though I will watch the Grey Cup.

One of the changes that would make football more exciting would be to allow player substitutions while a play is progress. That would be fun...

Hell I'd love a mix of kicking and lateral arm throwing of the ball to your teammates along with some light padded bumps and knocks between the players to make it interesting. It would definitely cull out the wimps that fake injuries for a penalty on the other team.

----------

There are so many things wrong with your statement I am indecisive about where to begin. But let's start with the obvious that trench warfare is about the most static form of war there is, and involves less "movement" or "quick reactions" than almost any other kind.

Then there is the fact that "Base-ball" had its great upsurge in popularity in the period 1870-1900, before hand grenades were commonplace.

Of course there is the whacked notion that "American leadership" was actively promoting Baseball during this period, whatever the reason.

I didn't notice any emoticon indicating that this was tongue-in-check, as it was actually a pretty good lampoon of a paranoid, loud ignoramus. If intended as humor, this was pretty funny. If not, pity is the appropriate sense.

Winners write history books. Losers write ethics books.

 

[snberk103]

….

Winners write history books. Losers write ethics books.

Yes. And it doesn't change the fact that baseball was being invented 80 years before the WWI and just 25 years after the war of 1812.

 

[CFreymarc]

Yes. And it doesn't change the fact that baseball was being invented 80 years before the WWI and just 25 years after the war of 1812.

If you are referring to the Abner Doubleday myth, you really need to know true history. American Baseball is a mix of British Rounders and Cricket (of with both games were designed to produce social angst) to a more social, relaxing and enterprising game giving the players more self-determinism and less stress.

 

[SkyBell]

I can only imagine the mods are allowing this ridiculous thread to continue purely out of entertainment value.

 

[snberk103]

If you are referring to the Abner Doubleday myth, you really need to know true history. American Baseball is a mix of British Rounders and Cricket (of with both games were designed to produce social angst) to a more social, relaxing and enterprising game giving the players more self-determinism and less stress.

I was merely responding to a quote that should be familiar.

American leadership noticed this very early in the promotion of the sport and hence why baseball was promoted (trains well for hand grenade throwing and quick reactions to enemy trench movements) instead of the pacifist sport of soccer.

I am mightily impressed that "American Leadership" had the foresight to develop a game - based on Rounders and Cricket - in the first half of the 1800s to instil skills in people for a war that was still more than half a century in the future. It was especially foresighted to involve the very British Colonists (in what was then called Upper Canada) whose game they were adapting in the creation of this variation on a British game. These would be the Colonists that the government in London was trying to pacify, of course.

How very prescient of the American Leadership …

Abner who? I looked up some stuff, and his name didn't come up. Must be an old myth.

Of course the Colonists were also adopting lacrosse… I'm not sure how that fits into the world view of pacifists vs self-determining.

Personally - I'm just curious what Apple and other techs are getting in return? The original article mentioned something about some exposure to be determined later. If was truly a genuinely generous gesture, it wouldn't come with strings attached. So - basically they've just bought some publicity - that's all. And bypassed the NFL broadcast contracts to do it too.

 

[Steve121178]

I don't care if its a debate or not. Football may not be as loved internationally, but it is a much larger business than soccer. Close to $10B in revenue.

The English Premier League alone had revenue of $5bn for the 2013-14 season. Then add the other few 100 countries to the equation and that $10bn will be dwarfed.

"Soccer" makes the NFL look like a charity case.

 

[snberk103]

Apple, along with fellow tech companies Intel, Yahoo, and Google, has given $2 million in cash and other services to offset taxpayer costs of hosting Super Bowl 50 in the Bay Area, reports the San Jose Mercury News

When big corporations have so much money they can give it away to taxpayers for a football game, while schools are laying off teachers... then I think the perhaps it's time to bump their taxes up a bit. Because basically it seems that all that would happen is that they would have a little less discretionary cash to throw around.

 

[angrybird2411]

Here is an apple largest technology company in the world, and is the work environment that many people desire to work.