As Santa Clara prepares for its second Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium next year, city officials project the big game will cost $6.3 million to host, with the expense and financial risk expected to fall on the Bay Area Host Committee and the San Francisco 49ers.
Santa Clara city officials this week unveiled the preliminary event agreement for the Super Bowl, which mirrors a similar deal the city struck earlier this year over the FIFA World Cup. In 2026, Santa Clara will become the first city to host the two major sporting events in the same calendar year, with the Super Bowl on Feb. 8 and six World Cup matches between June 13 and July 1. The city last hosted the Super Bowl in 2016 when the Peyton Manning-led Denver Broncos defeated the Carolina Panthers.
The proposed agreement, which is expected to be finalized next month, would require the Bay Area Host Committee — a nonprofit that has been working to bring major sporting events to the region — to reimburse the city for event expenses. If the organization can’t cover all the costs, the San Francisco 49ers, who manage the publicly owned stadium, have agreed to cover the rest.
City Manager Jovan Grogan said that the city has “learned some lessons from the Super Bowl 50 agreement.”
“The opportunity to host Super Bowl LX 10 years later represents not just a return of the NFL’s biggest event to Santa Clara, but a chance to once again collaborate with regional partners, support local businesses and create lasting economic and community benefits,” Grogan said at Tuesday’s Santa Clara City Council meeting. “Ensuring that we obtain reimbursement for event costs is of the utmost importance.”
While hosting large sporting events can economically benefit the region in the form of sales taxes, hotel taxes and new jobs, they’re often money losers for the organizers. When Santa Clara voters approved Levi’s Stadium back in 2010, the ballot initiative — known as Measure J — instituted taxpayer protections that prevented the city from dipping into the general fund for stadium-related expenses.
The Bay Area Host Committee already has reimbursed or is in the process of reimbursing the city nearly $348,000 — a commitment made in previous funding contracts over various planning costs. Under the proposed agreement, the organization would be required to make an advanced payment of 50% of the projected event costs on or before Dec. 25, 2025.
Aside from the reimbursement process, the agreement also lays out framework for cost disputes, the use of the nearby Convention Center and special modifications to the stadium lease around public safety costs.
Santa Clara will serve as the lead agency for providing security at and around Levi’s Stadium. The cost of cops at NFL games had been a point of contention between the city and the 49ers for years. The original stadium lease required the team to pay $170,000 per game for police — costs exceeding that threshold would be returned to the team via a rent credit. But a dispute ensued when costs ballooned.
The city and the team reached a settlement agreement last year over the issue and raised the threshold to $360,000 per game. But according to the terms being negotiated for the Super Bowl, that threshold won’t apply and the Bay Area Host Committee will pay the full cost for security.
“If that were the case, that would reduce the performance rent that would otherwise go to the city for that particular year,” City Attorney Glen Googins said of the provision.
The city also is in separate negotiations with the NFL over the potential use of the Youth Soccer Park, which is adjacent to the stadium. Ahead of Super Bowl 50, a youth sports league filed lawsuit against the NFL to try to block them from turning the park into a media camp, which the group feared would wreck the fields. A judge ultimately ruled in the NFL’s favor.
“Our intent is to get both a rental fee and a commitment to restore or replace the fields as needed to the extent, for example of the youth sports park, would result in damages of the field,” Googins said.
Mayor Lisa Gillmor, who was on the City Council during the last Super Bowl, pushed back on the reimbursement process outlined in the agreement and whether it complied with Measure J.
“The city is going to have to front a lot of payments in terms of millions of dollars for both Super Bowl and World Cup and they’re very close together,” she said.
The mayor wants the Bay Area Host Committee to make the advanced payment for 100% of the projected costs instead of just half. She also raised concerns about the nonprofit’s fundraising efforts, which the organization said are confidential, and over the 49ers’ guarantee to be a financial backstop.
Grogan, however, said that city officials believe they are in compliance with Measure J.
“Certainly no contract is fully risk proof,” he said. “But we do believe that the negotiated terms sufficiently insulate both the Stadium Authority and the general fund because of the direct commitment.”