Super Bowl Tax Revenues Not What City Leaders Anticipated

RICHARDSON (CBSDFW.COM) - Wednesday was a busy night at Wizards Sports Café, the kind of crowd owner Mark Gray said he would've loved to have Super Bowl week.

"When the weather hit, everybody was disappointed, but we thought it was going to be a one day thing," he said.

Unfortunately for Gray, the ice and snow turned out to be a five-day event. And when it was all over, Gray's business was down 25 percent by Super Sunday.

"It was just upsetting," he said. "Nothing like everybody thought is was going to be like."

According to the state comptroller's office, the host city of Arlington brought in nearly $5.8 million in January of this year. In February, the Super Bowl month, it brought in roughly the same amount.

The same can't be said for other cities. Sales tax revenue for Dallas, Fort Worth and Irving all dropped from January to February.

"I never thought it would be the river of gold and our economy would be built on the Super Bowl," said Roger Meiners, a University of Texas at Arlington economics professor.

Meiners said even if a Super Bowl makes money for area cities, it's usually far below expectations.

"Because the Super Bowl comes to town, maybe there was another convention or two that didn't come to town," Meiners said. "Other business gets crowded out by these large events, so it's not a total gain."

Meiners calls the sales tax revenue numbers for the month of February disappointing.

Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck said he's happy the city didn't lose money.

"I had a fear that it would be negative because of the huge weather problem here because people couldn't get out of their houses and couldn't get out of their hotel rooms,," he said.