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business newsProtecting Sports Fans Is Pricey in Age of Security
By
John F Kelly Nov 02, 2009 9:50 am
Washington -- and federal taxpayers -- pay a premium for big games.
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In the post-9/11 world, special events like the Olympics and the Super Bowl demand heightened security measures to ensure safety. These massive gatherings are classified as “Level 1 National Security Events,” akin to presidential inaugurations. In the past, the NFL has said that if you’re in the stadium watching the Super Bowl, you're in “one of the safest locations you can possibly be on Super Bowl Sunday in the United States of America.”Among the items banned from entry in to a Super Bowl event include containers of any kind, backpacks, large bags, cameras with lenses longer than six inches, hair spray, coolers, cases for cameras or binoculars, umbrellas, beach balls, and strollers.
But the security provided by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security comes at a cost to the nation's taxpayers -- the price of national security at Super Bowl XXXVI was $7 million. And while the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City made a profit, the cost figures didn't include $300 million in additional security provided by the US Department of Defense at no cost to the local organizing committee. For the 2004 Summer Games, the government in Athens spent $1.5 billion on security alone.
“Officially, the Salt Lake Winter Olympics turned a profit,” says Victor Matheson, associate professor of economics at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. “But they were held right after 9/11, so the government had squads of F-16s constantly circling the whole Olympic radius. No one in Salt Lake City paid for that. No one at the Olympics paid for that. That was the USA’s national military air force paying for it. If you were to calculate security costs into the Winter Olympics bill, you'd have to include tens of millions of dollars to operate a jet fighter for a day. And you had three of them over the stadiums for three weeks.”
Continue reading this story, below, or click on a category to see who wins and who loses when the big game comes to town.
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