San Jose’s leaders are taking a victory lap following the release of new figures gauging the impact of two major sporting events that took place in the South Bay earlier this year — Super Bowl 60 and NCAA’s March Madness games.
Across several business sectors — hotels, restaurants, retail and air travel — officials said the figures show significant economic wins. Now, with the region preparing to play host to a series of FIFA World Cup games in June, officials would like to duplicate the gains once more.
While still preliminary, the most recent figures covering the March Madness games hosted at the SAP Center suggest the events drove a surge in hotel bookings that provided an economic windfall for local hotels.
“I’m so impressed with what we’ve done together thus far, and really excited for the World Cup,” Mayor Matt Mahan said during a Tuesday City Council meeting.
San Jose has been laying the groundwork for all these festivities for more than a year. The preparations have included efforts to spruce up downtown with additional public art and improved signs. In addition, last year the city also hired former Olympic short track speed skater Tommy O’Hare as a sports and special events director to help oversee the planning work around the 2026 games.
Mahan and other San Jose leaders have framed these efforts as an investment in the city’s economic future.
“While the Super Bowl and World Cup won’t come every year, there are many sports, entertainment and other mass-scale events that we can be an incredible host city for,” Mahan said.
The city’s preliminary economic impact figures cover things such as hotel occupancy, restaurant and retail sales, flights through San Jose Mineta International Airport, as well as attendance rates across a variety of city-backed events like concerts and fan-fest parties held to coincide with the big games.
The March Madness games, which took place between March 26 and March 28, drew more than 46,000 spectators, officials said. Occupancy rates at the city’s hotels surged to 79.6%, a 12% increase from a year prior, according to the city’s figures. Meanwhile, the average daily price of a hotel room rose to $200.31, about 21% higher than a year prior.
As for the Super Bowl, held at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on Feb. 8, San Jose officials said the new figures suggest the city managed to secure a larger slice of the economic pie than it did during the last time the NFL’s premier game came to town in 2016. That game came as a disappointment to many in San Jose, given that the lion’s share of economic gains went to San Francisco.
Among the positive economic indicators, officials said San Jose’s downtown area attracted nearly 460,000 unique visitors, a 25% increase from a year prior. In addition, Nuvo Hospitality Group, which owns several downtown restaurants, reported a 300% increase in sales compared to a typical weekend.
“So (it was a) really great opportunity for us to feature everything that’s great about San Jose when we have all this traffic coming in from the big sporting events,” O’Hare said during Tuesday’s meeting. “We don’t have all the data in yet, but it’s really showing strong economic benefits from these sporting events.”
The Bay Area Host Committee, an umbrella organization that oversees major sporting events in the region, is expected to release full economic impact data later this year.
The findings have won cheers from many in the local business community.
“We are thrilled with the outcomes to-date,” Brian Kurtz, CEO of the San Jose Downtown Association, told San José Spotlight. “Downtown San Jose has experienced significant growth in foot traffic leading up to and during these events and, even more importantly, foot traffic has converted to increased and even record sales at our small businesses during the major events.”
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But some business owners said those gains have been uneven. Randy Musterer, owner of Sushi Confidential in San Pedro Square, said while the Super Bowl drove major traffic to his restaurant, leading to record-setting sales on game day, he described March Madness as a “bit of a flop.”
“Super Bowl was out of the park, but Sweet 16 was somewhat of a normal weekend,” he told San José Spotlight. “Like a big Sharks game or something like that.”
The outcome of this year’s sporting events have also disappointed some councilmembers who represent neighborhoods that lie outside of downtown, where the games provided less of a business boost.
District 8 Councilmember Domingo Candelas, who represents portions of East San Jose, said he wants the city to move more aggressively to make sure activation events will be organized throughout the city next month and July when a series of six World Cup games roll through Levi’s Stadium.
“We have one more shot at it,” Candelas said Tuesday.
Contact Keith Menconi at [email protected] or @KeithMenconi on X.