Playing the championship game of the National Football League in the largest metropolis in the country means that everything connected to it will be outsize.
Premium tickets will cost twice as much as for any other Super Bowl, many hotels are doubling their room rates and advertisers are paying record amounts to broadcast commercials during the game, which is expected to be watched by one billion people around the world.
But even as the region prepares to host America’s premier sports event, there is renewed scrutiny of the cost to New Jersey and its taxpayers to build such an opulent stadium, which was developed, in part, with the Super Bowl in mind and which has proved to be lucrative for its two tenants, the New York Giants and the New York Jets.
“The stadium deal is one of the biggest real estate heists in New Jersey history,” said George Zoffinger, the former president of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, who was involved in the state’s negotiations for the new stadium. “They got rolled by three New York billionaires.”
Mr. Zoffinger was referring to John K. Mara and Steve Tisch, co-owners of the Giants, and Woody Johnson, the owner of the Jets.
Although public money has been used to help many teams around the country build sports facilities, the Jets and the Giants built their stadium without any direct public subsidies. Everything else about the deal, however, has resulted in significant financial benefit for the teams, who ended up having to pay the state very little out of their own pockets.
The building was erected on state-owned land at the 750-acre New Jersey sports complex, about nine miles west of Times Square. The state gave the Jets and the Giants 20 acres each for training facilities, as well as the right to develop 75 acres into a sprawling development of stores, restaurants and entertainment sites. The state spent over $ 250 million on improvements to surrounding highways, construction of a new train station, utilities and other infrastructure benefits. And the teams got control of the hundreds of acres of parking lots surrounding the stadium.
The state authority built the original stadium nearby in 1977 for $ 75 million, to lure the Giants to New Jersey from New York. The Jets took up residence in 1984. The financial arrangement was straightforward: The teams shared the revenue from parking, concessions and luxury suites with the state, while the authority received all the revenue from soccer, concerts and state fairs. There were no naming rights; it was simply Giants Stadium — much to the chagrin of the Jets.
But with the new stadium, the Giants and the Jets no longer had to share the revenue from parking, suites or premium club seats, or the roughly $ 100 million a year in revenue from concerts, naming rights and a handful of top-tier or “cornerstone” sponsors.
In return for the stadium land, the parking lots and development rights, the Jets and the Giants pay the sports authority a total of $ 6.3 million a year in rent and other payments.
And though the teams reluctantly covered the cost of demolishing the old stadium, taxpayers are still paying off about $ 100 million in bonds on a building that no longer exists.
“Tearing down a good stadium and building another one wasn’t one of my objectives,” said Raymond H. Bateman, a former Republican state legislator and one-time chairman of the Sports and Exposition Authority. “The impact of those stadiums has not been a significant thing for the public.”
Richard J. Codey, the former New Jersey governor who helped lead the negotiations, said taxpayers were benefiting from the deal. To prevent the talks from collapsing at the last minute, Mr. Codey acknowledged, he yielded on a key demand by the teams: Governments had to be prohibited from imposing a tax on luxury suites, ticket sales or any other revenue producers unless it was deducted from the rent. Ultimately, Mr. Codey, a Democrat, said, he “caved in.”
Yahoo Local News – New York Times
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=18118
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