By Robert Haugh
Santa Clara is preparing to bill the Bay Area Host Committee more than $6 million for Super Bowl expenses.
A presentation slide shown at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting said the City’s total estimated Super Bowl deployment expenses were $6,025,898.90 for the February 2026 game.
The written staff report said the City had so far invoiced $878,580 in Super Bowl costs. The City has been reimbursed $611,030.
That’s only part of the picture.
The same report said BAHC had already provided an advance payment of about $2.2 million for Super Bowl deployment costs. But its’ subject to BAHC approval.
City staff were still reconciling final event expenses, with a final invoice expected by May 1. That’s when the real test will come.
So far, the report says, BAHC has disputed only a relatively small share of the City’s bills. For Super Bowl costs, the unresolved amount tied to a training documentation request was listed at $18,353. But the much larger January and February event bills have not yet gone through the full reimbursement process.
Under the system the City staff set up, BAHC must approve expenses before they are actually paid. That could become a major issue once the biggest invoices arrive.
The 49ers created BAHC to raise money for Super Bowl and FIFA World Cup costs. Numerous press reports have documented how the organization is having serious trouble raising money.
Last night, City staff also told the council that BAHC is trying to push some FIFA-related costs onto the County, rather than paying them directly.
The staff report says BAHC has asked the City to pursue reimbursement through County-administered funding streams, even though the City maintains BAHC remains responsible under its contracts if those other reimbursements do not come through.
Mayor Lisa Gillmor made clear Tuesday that Santa Clara should not be passive.
“We have contracts in place; we just need to enforce them,” she said.
Councilmember Kelly Cox struck a similar tone.
“Good business partners adhere to their agreements,” Cox said.
Councilmember Kevin Park, one of the 49er Five and a beneficiary of millions in independent expenditures from the team for his City Council campaigns, sounded a lot less concerned.
“Businesses are not actually about money,” Park said. “Business is really about a relationship.”
Has anyone noticed that with millions owed to the city, with a world at war,Kevin Park is focusing his limited brain capacity on a cacophony of parliamentary tomfoolery regarding continuing his own motions? Park knows so little about rules of order that he prolongs meetings while attempting to fill up the Probate Court with endless demands on estates of former neighbors.
At the time that these contracts were being negotiated, I advocated that the City get all the money it was projected to expend up front. The City did not have an obligation to agree to hold the Super Bowl in Santa Clara: we had all the leverage we needed to demand payment from the billionaire NFL owners who had no where else to go. And when it came to assigning the FIFA deal to the Bay Area Host Committee, I advocated that the City should keep the $13 Million in rent that FIFA had agreed to pay for use of the Stadium, rather than allow the money to go the Host Committee to spend and then pay the City expenses subject to their objection. Mr. Park along with the other council members who had benefited from 49er “independent” expenditures instead approved these ridiculous agreements that give all the leverage over millions of dollars to a nonprofit with no assets.
Park is hysterical. Really? Comments like that is what has the business community concerned about this council.