economic

The Super Bowl, the biggest event in American football, is set for Sunday with the Seattle Seahawks facing the New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

The massive sporting event is set to energise fans in both cities and will send thousands this year to the San Francisco Bay Area. Those unable to make the trip are still expected to spend heavily on food, drinks and watch parties across the United States.

Historically, the Super Bowl has been a major economic boon for host cities. For the Bay Area, the event is part of a stretch of three major sporting spectacles lifting the regional economy.

A local boost?

In 2024, the Bay Area Host Committee commissioned a report forecasting the economic impact of the 2025 NBA All-Star Game, the 2026 Super Bowl, and the FIFA World Cup, all taking place in the region. The report estimated that Sunday’s game alone would generate between $370m and $630m in economic output for the Bay Area.

Last year’s Super Bowl was hosted in New Orleans, Louisiana. State officials reported the event brought in 115,000 visitors who spent $658m in the city.

For consumers, Bank of America estimates a 77 percent jump in spending near the stadium. A study analysing spending patterns from Super Bowl games between 2017 and 2025 found that, on game day, spending surged in the postal code closest to the stadium, with the biggest surge in food and parking costs.

Hosting the game does come with its own expenses for cities.

In the case of Santa Clara, it is small compared with the forecasted output. Last year, it was projected the city would cost them $6.3m, which includes training personnel for the influx of visitors and other logistical needs. However, other games have cost municipalities much more. When Atlanta hosted the Super Bowl in 2019, it cost the city an estimated $46m.

In 2023, the day after the game, which was played in Glendale, Arizona, outside of Phoenix, was the single busiest at Phoenix Sky Harbor international airport in its history, with more than 200,000 passengers passing through the airport, which is a hub for American Airlines and where budget carriers Southwest Airlines and Frontier maintain a large presence.

Other cities have used major sporting events to kick off large-scale infrastructure projects. In 2004 – ahead of the Super Bowl in Houston, Texas – METRO, the city’s transit authority, launched its first light rail line just a month before the game. The line, now one of three in the system, runs from downtown Houston to the city’s football stadium.

Prior to its launch, Houston was the only major metropolitan city in the US without a rail system.

But not all infrastructure projects paid off. Las Vegas built Allegiant Stadium in the neighbouring suburb of Paradise when the city acquired the Raiders football team from Oakland during the 2020 season. A year later, in 2021, Las Vegas won the bid to host the 2024 Super Bowl. The stadium cost $1.9bn. Nearly $750m came from hotel taxes, but the rest was shouldered by local taxpayers.

“The economic benefits are relatively short-term, not just in duration, but also in scope. They’re limited to certain industries and specific locations,” Michael Edwards, a professor of sport management at North Carolina State University, told Al Jazeera.

“The NFL [National Football League] often uses the Super Bowl as a carrot to encourage cities to invest taxpayer money in new stadiums. You’re seeing that dynamic play out in places like Chicago and Cleveland, where officials are considering domed stadiums. Part of that push is almost certainly driven by the possibility of hosting a Super Bowl, which the league dangles as an incentive,” Edwards said.

Food spending

For those who can’t make it to the game itself, there is still a surge in Americans heading to bars and restaurants to watch the game or spending money throwing a watch party.

The National Retail Federation, which has been tracking Super Bowl spending for the last decade, expects that Americans will spend a record $20.2bn, or $94.77 per person, on the big game with 79 percent of that on food.

Spending has skyrocketed since 2021 when consumers spent $13.9bn, or $74.55 per person. However, that dropped from $17.2bn in 2020 when the Super Bowl happened about a month before the COVID-19 lockdowns in the US began.

For those hosting a Super Bowl watch party at home, it will cost more than last year to stock up on the quintessential game-day foods. Wells Fargo estimates that hosting 10 people will cost about $140 per person, up from $138 last year.

Chicken wings, a staple for football fans, are a bright spot for wallets; prices are down 2.8 percent compared with this time last year. Potato chip prices are flat, but dips like salsa have jumped 1.7 percent.

Healthier options are getting more expensive as well for those opting for a veggie platter. Cherry tomatoes are up 2 percent, celery has risen 2.6 percent, and both broccoli and cauliflower are up 4 percent. Beer prices are also climbing, up 1.3 percent from a year ago.

Advertising hits records

The Super Bowl is airing on NBC with the network getting a boost in advertising spending for the big game. NBC sold out of advertising spots for the Super Bowl in September for a record $10m on average for a 30-second spot – up from $8m on average last year when the games aired on Fox.

NBC also benefits from a collection of sporting events all taking part in February that drive up advertising revenue, including from the Winter Olympics. The opening ceremony is on Friday and will run until February 22. NBC has exclusive broadcasting rights for the Olympics in the US.

“With the resurgence of the Olympic movement, our strongest Sports Upfront in history, the early sell-out of Super Bowl LX, and the remarkable return of the NBA, NBCUniversal has solidified itself as a sports powerhouse, and brands have taken notice,” Mark Marshall, chairman of NBCUniversal’s global advertising and partnerships, said in a release.

The last time the games were in the same year, back in 2024, the two events were the most-watched events on linear television.

On Wall Street, the looming sporting events set to air on NBC have sent parent company Comcast’s stock surging up more than 4 percent over the past five days.

Until January 3, Maduro & Co. managed to construct a form of “normalcy” that was business-friendly enough to attract foreign capital, drawn in by the Special Economic Zones and by the marriage between the bolibourgeoisie and national capital that survived economic collapse in the 2010s. Chevron and other major international companies accepted doing business in Venezuela because Maduro’s illegitimacy did not prevent them from projecting returns in the short, medium, and long term. Maduro could offer this normalcy at the cost of violence and a “gentleman’s agreement”. Still, only the companies that feel sufficiently secure in what remains a high-risk bet under these conditions ultimately enter the country.

Part of this arrangement involved negotiating a degree of sanctions relief with the United States, expressed most clearly through the license granted to Chevron. Now, with Maduro effectively sidelined and Delcy Rodríguez—architect of Maduro’s economic reform—holding power, the US seeks to open and deepen its investments. On January 9, Trump met with executives from major oil companies and urged them to make large-scale investments in Venezuelan projects. Several executives replied that, under current conditions, Venezuela could not be considered a safe destination for their firms. They see no real guarantees of stability or long-term predictability in the existing economic rules of the game, because this normalcy continues to rest on the arbitrariness of the National Executive, the use of violence, and political whims. Today, power may align itself with Washington. Tomorrow, it could attempt an anti-imperialist rupture.

The supposedly “moderate” Delcy is still far from consolidated vis-à-vis anti-imperialist power brokers, such as those embodied by Diosdado Cabello or senior FANB officers. The US openly acknowledges this, signaling that it continues to keep an eye on these actors—hinting at the possibility of a second attack or leaking to the press its intention to have the CIA permanently stationed in Venezuela. Delcy, for her part, appears to be trying to neutralize the most hardline anti-imperialist sectors. She strives to maintain a hostile rhetoric—that Trump and Rubio don’t seem to care about—that does not match her actions.

However, no new law can erase the reality that, at the core of all policy, lies the arbitrary decision-making power of whoever holds authority.

Trump understands the reasons behind the reluctance of large-scale capital, which is indispensable to consolidating Washington’s new role as the steward of Venezuela’s future. He seeks to reassure investors that they are not negotiating with the Venezuelan State, but with the US government itself, and that it is his word (not Delcy’s) that underwrites these agreements. Yet Trump’s own arbitrariness, his erratic and unpredictable governing style, also adds another layer of risk to the level of investment he is demanding from these companies.

The reform of the Organic Hydrocarbons Law signals that the new regime is willing to accept whatever demands are necessary to make investments feel safe and profitable, stabilizing a legal framework meant to introduce a degree of predictability into the new normalcy Delcy is attempting to rebuild. However, no new law can erase the reality that, at the core of all policy, lies the arbitrary decision-making power of whoever holds authority. As a result, the risk never truly disappears: what is law today may cease to be so tomorrow.

What the new economy could look like

Most likely, securing terms acceptable to US capital is requiring Delcy to offer increased profit margins accompanied by special legal guarantees. It will also require a shift in how the subordination of workers to this new national economic agreement is managed. If Delcy’s trend toward rehabilitating the image of the National State includes releasing political prisoners, it may also reflect an acknowledgment that sustaining normalcy through the exploitation and repression of Venezuelan workers is no longer viable.

This possibility surfaced in her January 15 address to the National Assembly, when she proposed creating two sovereign funds financed by the foreign currency generated by the new oil arrangement. One fund would be devoted to “social protection,” aimed at improving workers’ incomes through unspecified mechanisms (salary increases or bonuses?) and strengthening health, education, food provision, and housing. The other would focus on rebuilding infrastructure and public services. This latter proposal aligns closely with Trump’s vision, which presented US capital with an arrangement centered on restoring national infrastructure to support oil operations.

Major international oil companies can extract profits without living in the country, but Venezuelan companies cannot. For them, the transition to democracy must also become a necessity.

If these plans materialize under US supervision, we could anticipate an increase in economic activity. More consumption and a greater supply of US imports, particularly since Trump (and hinted by Rubio on Wednesday) has already conditioned payment for Venezuelan oil on the exclusive purchase of American products in equivalent amounts.

It is difficult to predict how the population would react. After the Guaidó interim presidency failed to oust Maduro, Venezuelans increasingly abandoned aspirations for political change, retreating instead into private life or into their economic activities as workers or small entrepreneurs, seeking some form of long-term personal and family stability, along with sufficient margins of consumption to make life in Venezuela bearable. If the economic scenario were to change radically, would the population accept the continuation of chavismo without demanding guarantees of democratic processes in the medium or long term, so long as a new era of prosperity and consumption is secured?

Challenges for democratic politics

María Corina Machado and the opposition face a stark problem: the transition could unfold without them. A transition negotiated exclusively between the US and the ruling Rodríguez faction risks sidelining essential demands for building a healthy democracy—such as the unconditional release of all political prisoners, transitional justice processes, the dismantling of repressive forces, environmental protection in southern Venezuela, the reconstruction of democratic participation mechanisms, and the achievement of genuinely free and effective elections.

Democratic forces risk seeing citizens accept the abandonment of these demands in exchange for renewed economic prosperity, without recognizing that, in the medium and long term, these very demands are the only ones capable of guaranteeing that economic recovery and social liberalization can endure beyond the whims of the National Executive.

Rather than immediately confronting the National State, democratic demands for freedom, memory, truth, and justice should be brought into the very circuits of consumption that the PSUV has built.

Democratic actors could prevent a transition from moving forward without them by restoring, through the comanditos, a strategy of regular and sustained mobilization around an initial demand that doesn’t represent an existential threat for PSUV. The demand for the release of political prisoners is crucial here. As seen in the exchange between student leaders from the Universidad Central (UCV) and Delcy Rodríguez, this demand unexpectedly opened space for a form of dialogue, however imperfect it was.

For Delcy’s new normalcy to function, it requires forgetting and a citizenry able to consume freely without the guilt that comes from acknowledging that this new enjoyment is built upon the acceptance of impunity. A democratic political strategy must therefore aim to generate discomfort and prevent oblivion.

Following this logic, protests should innovate. Rather than immediately confronting the National State, democratic demands for freedom, memory, truth, and justice should be brought into the very circuits of consumption that the PSUV has built to benefit national capital, the bolibourgeoisie, small business owners, and resigned or apathetic workers. This means unsettling not only the political actors at the helm of this transition process, but also their economic counterparts. Major international oil companies can extract profits without living in the country, but Venezuelan companies cannot. For them, the transition to democracy must also become a necessity.

If not out of fear of the costs of authoritarianism, then their necessity should be driven by the high social price of failing to promote the national democratic reconstruction.

It was built on democracy, open markets and cooperation – with America at the helm.

But the rules-based global order created after World War II is now under strain. Conflicts are rising. International rules are being tested. Trade tensions are escalating. And alliances are shifting.

At the centre of it all is US President Donald Trump.

In just a few short weeks, he’s captured Venezuela’s president, vowed to take control of Greenland, and threatened to slap tariffs on those who oppose him.

Meanwhile, China is presenting itself as a stable partner.

Many warn that the global order is starting to break apart.

British PM Keir Starmer’s China visit is the first by a UK leader in eight years and marks a thaw in frosty relations.

The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in the first trip of its kind by a British leader in eight years.

Starmer said before his trip that doing business with China was the pragmatic choice and it was time for a “mature” relationship with the world’s second-largest economy.

“I have long been clear that the UK and China need a long-term, consistent and comprehensive strategic partnership,” Starmer said on Thursday.

During their meeting, Starmer told Xi that he hopes the two leaders can “identify opportunities to collaborate, but also allow a meaningful dialogue on areas where we disagree”.

Xi stressed the need for more “dialogue and cooperation” amid a “complex and intertwined” international situation.

The meeting between the two leaders in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Thursday was due to last about 40 minutes, and will be followed by another meeting between Starmer and Chinese Premier Li Qiang later in the day.

Starmer is in China for three days and is accompanied by a delegation representing nearly 50 UK businesses and cultural organisations, including HSBC, British Airways, AstraZeneca and GSK.

The last trip by a UK prime minister was in 2018, when Theresa May visited Beijing.

Strengthening economic and security cooperation was at the top of the agenda during the Xi-Starmer meeting, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Katrina Yu.

“[Starmer] has the very big task of bringing this diplomatic relationship out of years of deep freeze, so the focus when he talks to Xi Jinping will be finding areas of common ground,” Yu said from Beijing.

China was the UK’s fourth-largest trading partner in 2025, with bilateral trade worth $137bn, according to UK government data.

Starmer is seeking to deepen those ties with Xi despite criticism at home around China’s human rights record and its status as a potential national security threat.

Besides business dealings, Starmer and Xi are also expected to announce further cooperation in the area of law enforcement to reduce the trafficking of undocumented immigrants into the UK by criminal gangs.

Relations between the UK and China have been frosty since Beijing launched a political crackdown in Hong Kong, a former British colony, following months of antigovernment protests in 2019.

London has also criticised the prosecution in Hong Kong of the pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who is also a British citizen, on national security charges.

Starmer’s trip to China comes as both Beijing and London’s relationship with the United States is under strain from President Donald Trump’s tariff war.

Trump’s recent threats to annex Greenland have also raised alarm among NATO members, including the UK.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s tax and spending pledges in advance of snap elections next month have sent jitters through global markets.

Japanese government bonds and the yen have been on a rollercoaster since Takaichi unveiled plans to pause the country’s consumption tax if her Liberal Democratic Party wins the February 8 vote.

The market turmoil reflects concerns about the long-term sustainability of Japan’s debt levels, which are the highest among advanced economies.

The volatility has extended beyond Japan, highlighting broader fiscal sustainability worries in an era in which the United States and other major economies are running huge deficits.

What has Takaichi promised on the economy?

Takaichi said last week that she would suspend the country’s 8 percent consumption tax on food and non-alcoholic beverages for two years if her government is returned to power, following her dissolution of the House of Representatives.

Based on Japanese government data, Takaichi’s plan would result in an estimated revenue shortfall of 5 trillion yen ($31.71bn) each year.

Takaichi, a proponent of predecessor Shinzo Abe’s agenda of high public spending and ultra-loose monetary policy, said the shortfall could be made up by reviewing existing expenditures and tax breaks, but did not provide specific details.

Takaichi’s tax pledge comes after her Cabinet in November approved Japan’s largest stimulus since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The package, worth 21.3 trillion yen ($137bn), included one-time cash handouts of 20,000 yen per child for families, subsidies for utility bills amounting to about 7,000 yen per household over a three-month period, and food coupons worth 3,000 yen per person.

Why have Takaichi’s pledges unnerved markets?

Japan’s long-term government bond yields soared following Takaichi’s announcement.

Yields on 40-year bonds rose above 4 percent on Tuesday, the highest on record, as investors exited from Japanese government debt en masse.

Bond markets, through which governments borrow money from investors in exchange for paying out a fixed rate of interest, are closely watched as a gauge of the health of countries’ balance sheets.

While typically offering lower returns than stocks, government bonds are seen as low-risk investments as they have the backing of the state, making them attractive to investors seeking safe places to park their money.

As confidence in a government’s ability to repay its debts declines, bond yields rise as investors seek higher interest payments for holding riskier debt.

“When Prime Minister Takaichi announced a planned reduction in consumption taxes, this made existing bond-holders of Japan’s debt uneasy, requiring a higher compensation for the risk they bear,” Anastassia Fedyk, an assistant professor of finance at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley, told Al Jazeera.

“As a result, bond prices dropped and yields rose. And yes, this is a general pattern that applies to other countries, too, though Japan has an especially high level of debt, making its position more vulnerable.”

Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio already exceeds 230 percent, following decades of deficit spending by governments aiming to reverse the country’s long-term economic stagnation.

The East Asian country’s debt burden stands far above that of peers such as the US, UK and France, whose debt-to-GDP ratios are about 125 percent, 115 percent and 101 percent, respectively.

At the same time, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has been scaling back bond purchases as part of its move away from decades of ultra-low interest rates, limiting its options for interventions to bring yields down.

“Bond investors reacted because her headline package looks like large, near-term fiscal loosening at exactly the moment the BOJ is trying to normalise policy,” Sayuri Shirai, a professor of economics at Keio University in Tokyo, told Al Jazeera.

How does all this affect the rest of the world?

The sell-off in Japanese bonds reverberated through markets overseas, with yields on 30-year US Treasuries rising to their highest level since September.

As Japanese bond yields rise, local investors are able to earn higher interest payments at home.

That can incentivise investors to offload other bonds, such as US Treasuries.

As of November, Japanese investors held $1.2 trillion in US Treasuries, more than any other foreign group of buyers.

In an interview with Fox News last week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expressed concern about the impact of Japan’s bond market on US Treasury prices and said he anticipated that his Japanese counterparts would “begin saying the things that will calm the market down.”

Japan’s long-term bond yields fell on Monday amid the expectations that Japanese and US authorities would step in to prop up the yen.

On Friday, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York had inquired about the cost of exchanging the Japanese currency for US dollars.

“Japan matters globally through flows. If Japanese government bond yields rise, Japanese investors can earn more at home, potentially reducing demand for foreign bonds; that can nudge global yields and risk pricing,” Shirai said.

“This is why global-market pieces have framed Japan’s bond move as a wider rates story.”

Higher bond yields in Japan, the US and elsewhere raise the cost of borrowing and servicing the national debt.

In a worst-case scenario, a sharp escalation in interest rates can lead to a country defaulting on its debts.

Masahiko Loo, a fixed income strategist at State Street Investment Management in Tokyo, said that the reaction of international investors to Takaichi’s plans reflects growing sensitivity to fiscal credibility in highly indebted economies.

“Yes, Japan may be the spark, but the warning applies equally to the US and others with large structural deficits,” Loo told Al Jazeera.

Is Japan on the verge of a financial crisis?

Probably not.

While Japan is more indebted than its peers, its fiscal position is more sustainable than it might appear due to factors specific to the country – at least in the short to medium term – according to economists.

The vast majority of Japan’s debt is held by local institutions and denominated in yen, reducing the likelihood of a panic induced by foreign investors, while interest rates are far lower than in other economies.

“The debt situation is more manageable than a lot of people think,” Thomas Mathews, head of markets for Asia Pacific at Capital Economics, told Al Jazeera.

“Net debt-to-GDP is on a downward trajectory, and Japan’s budget deficit isn’t all that big by global standards.”

Loo of State Street Investment Management said that the turmoil surrounding Japan had more to do with a “communication gap around fiscal sustainability and policy coordination” than the country’s solvency.

“That said, markets are likely to continue testing the feasibility of the agenda, as even fiscally sanguine countries have, at times, been disciplined by market forces,” Loo said.