Commentary: NFL Should Cover Super Bowl 50 Shortfalls For Local Businesses

(KCBS) -- The confetti's been raked up at Levi's Stadium and crews are busy hauling off the remnants of Super Bowl City in San Francisco. Organizers are proclaiming the whole Super Bowl 50 experience a big success and making it clear they'd like to do it again in 5 or 6 years.

They're running the numbers now, and even allowing for some creative economics, it's obvious that plenty of people made out well. You saw the crowds and heard the stories about jacked-up hotel and restaurant prices.

But it wasn't a win for everyone. I'm not talking about the bar owners who didn't see the bonanza they'd hoped for. I'm talking about a handful of small businesses and individuals who were shoved aside so the NFL and its corporate partners could use San Francisco as their private venue.

We interviewed Super Bowl Host Committee CEO Keith Bruce, and he accentuated the positive. "I think you have to look at the total economic impact," Bruce told us. Fine. But what if you're that jewelry vendor shoved out of Justin Herman Plaza? Or the Ferry Building restaurant reporting a double-digit drop in sales?

Or the dry-cleaner inside the security zone who saw business fall off a cliff?

San Francisco Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Jane Kim are proposing the city spend $100,000 reimbursing small merchants for their losses. But why should the taxpayers be doing this?

How hard would it be for the multi-billion dollar behemoth that is the NFL to make these people whole? The league could score a big PR win by spending what amounts to a rounding error on its bloated ledger.

The NFL keeps telling us "Football Is Family". Families do the right thing.

In:
• NFL
• San Francisco