Deal, Reed team up to pitch city as Super Bowl site

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By Aaron Gould Sheinin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Gov.-elect Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed have teamed up to try and bring the Super Bowl back to Atlanta, and the first move was to meet in Atlanta with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell prior to Thursday night's game between the Falcons and the Baltimore Ravens at the Georgia Dome.

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The 2000 Super Bowl, the last held in Atlanta, had an estimated impact of $292 million, according to the Atlanta Sports Council, the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and Georgia State University. Adjusted for inflation for 2010, that figure rises to more than $375 million.

Associated Press The 2000 Super Bowl, the last held in Atlanta, had an estimated impact of $292 million, according to the Atlanta Sports Council, the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and Georgia State University. Adjusted for inflation for 2010, that figure rises to more than $375 million.

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Goodell, after speaking with Deal in the afternoon, seemed to indicate that Atlanta’s best chance of hosting another Super Bowl would be with a new stadium, which would lengthen the process.

“I think this is a great community,” the NFL commissioner said. “But as I mentioned to the people earlier today, the competition for the Super Bowl is really at an all-time high, in a large part because of the new stadiums.

“The provisions that they have for a new stadium in this great community, I think that’s a pretty powerful force. We have a history of going back to communities when they have those new stadiums.”

Estimates put the value of a Super Bowl to the host city in the range of $500 million, although some analysts question whether those figures are inflated. The 2000 Super Bowl, the last held in Atlanta, had an estimated impact of $292 million, according to the Atlanta Sports Council, the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and Georgia State University. Adjusted for inflation for 2010, that figure rises to more than $375 million.

The 1996 Olympics held in Atlanta had an estimated impact of $5.1 billion in 1996 dollars. The city's recent bid to be part of any World Cup soccer tournament the U.S. lands estimated the games would bring $300 million to $600 million to the area.

Landing a Super Bowl is a massive undertaking for a city, and Atlanta has not been successful in recent attempts to procure the big game. Atlanta was considered a finalist for the 2009 Super Bowl, but its bid in 2005 fell short to Tampa. The city offered rent-free use of facilities, a sales tax rebate on tickets and up to $8 million in government money. Now, it hopes to make another bid.

"Atlanta is a world-class city that knows how to host world-class events," Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said in a statement. "We would welcome the opportunity to bring the Super Bowl back to the capital of the Southeast. I look forward to having meaningful discussions with Gov.-elect Deal, Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell."

Atlanta is also competing with its own Super Bowl history. The pro football championship game has come to the city twice before, in 1994 and in 2000. The 2000 game, between the St. Louis Rams and the Tennessee Titans, is known as one of the best played contests in Super Bowl history.However, the city that weekend was socked by a brutal ice storm and a post-game attack in Buckhead that left two men dead and one of the NFL's top young stars, Ravens' linebacker Ray Lewis, charged with murder. Lewis eventually pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.

Another major factor NFL owners use to pick a site for their annual extravaganza is the extravagance of the stadium. It's all part of a what Allen St. John calls "a reasonably large political football."

St. John is the author of "The Billion Dollar Game: Behind the Scenes at the Greatest Day in American Sports, Super Bowl Sunday." He said the benefit to the host city is often exaggerated and that the NFL increasingly awards the Super Bowl to cities with lavish new stadiums.

"You'll go and find numbers ranging from literally zero ... to half a billion dollars," St. John said about the potential economic impact. "There is and can be a very legitimate disagreement about this."

It's a complicated deduction, he said, that must consider whether money spent over the week or more of Super Bowl festivities would have been spent otherwise if the game hadn't come to the city.

"You can build the model very conservatively, in which case you'll come up with a very small number," he said. "The people with the largest number are people working for the [city's] host committee or people with some vested interest."

The NFL has strict formula for determining where the game can be played. If it's in a city without a domed stadium, it has to have an average game-day temperature of more than 50 degrees. Atlanta, of course, has the Georgia Dome (and the average high temperature in February is 57 degrees, according to weather.com).

The weather, or at least the memory of that 2000 ice storm, was said to be a major stumbling block for NFL owners when they chose Tampa over Atlanta for the 2009 game.

The league has increasingly rewarded cities that built new stadiums with a Super Bowl. In 2006, the game was held in Detroit's new, domed Ford Field. In 2008, it went to Arizona's sparkling University of Phoenix Stadium. This coming February's contest will be held in the $1.2 billion Cowboys Stadium in Dallas. In 2012, the game moves to Indianapolis' new enclosed Lucas Oil Stadium.

The 2014 contest was awarded to the new home of the New York Giants and New York Jets, the outdoor stadium at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. But that game is considered an exception to the 50-degree rule.

The Georgia Dome, by contrast, is 18 years old and Falcons owner Arthur Blank has made no secret of his desire for a new outdoor stadium. The Dome, owned by the state and managed by the Georgia World Congress Center, lacks the high-tech advances of newer facilities, Blank has argued, which he said has hampered the city's ability to attract the Super Bowl.

The World Congress Center proposed in June adding a retractable roof to the Dome along with a host of other improvements in an effort to keep the Falcons, its key tenant. But Falcons leadership have said they prefer a new open-air stadium on the same campus as the Georgia Dome.

To help keep the Falcons downtown, the General Assembly earlier this year agreed to extend the hotel-motel tax that is used to pay down debt on the Dome. The tax expires in 2020, but would keep collections coming until 2050. The money could be used for an expansion of the Dome or a new facility, but only on the World Congress Center campus.