TAMPA — The local organizers of the upcoming college football championship at Raymond James Stadium are asking Hillsborough County to pitch in $1 million to help host the event.
The Tampa Bay Sports Commission will use the money to pay for operational costs of running a marquee sporting event, including security and ticket takers, local transportation for the teams, accommodating the flood of national media and adding 6,600 extra seats into Raymond James for the Jan. 9 game.
"This is an incredible opportunity for us as a community and this support is essential in making sure we showcase our home town like never before," said Rob Higgins, executive director of the sports commission.
Hillsborough County commissioners will decide Wednesday whether to give the money to the Tampa Bay Sports Commission, a non-profit agency tasked with recruiting sporting events to the area. In 2013, Higgins' team won the bid to hold the second College Football Playoff National Championship at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
The bid — which was more than 7,000 pages long — did not guarantee a financial commitment from the county but it did pitch taxpayer contributions to similar events in the past as a selling point, Higgins said.
The $1 million would come from tourist development taxes, also known as the bed tax, which is collected on every dollar spent at hotels, motels and RV parks.
In that sense, County Commissioner Ken Hagan said, tourists, and not locals, are footing the bill.
"This is consistent with how we have handled Super Bowls and the Republican National Convention," Hagan said. "It's consistent with how we handled the showcase events for our community."
In 2009, the county contributed $1.5 million in tourist development tax dollars to help put on Super Bowl XLIII at Raymond James Stadium, and it put $1 million toward hosting the RNC in 2012.
State law only allows the county to use the bed tax to build tourism facilities like convention centers or museums, promoting tourism to Hillsborough, and beach and shoreline maintenance. It can also be used to support construction and maintenance of sports stadiums.
Hillsborough County is already budgeted to give the Tampa Bay Sports Commission $760,000 as part of its annual contribution to the agency.
Higgins said the additional $1 million from the county is less than 10 percent of the total cost of running the event, though for competitive purposes he would not divulge what that amount is.
County officials say they are confident the economic impact of hosting such a major sporting event will more than make up for the investment.
Contact Steve Contorno at scontorno@tampabay.com. Follow @scontorno.