NFL History | University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale — Renting a Car Is Not Operating One

On 3 February 2008 the National Football League played its championship game at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. New York beat New England 17 to 14. The box score at Pro-Football-Reference prints the quarters as New York 3, 0, 0, 14 and New England 0, 7, 0, 7, and gives the attendance as 71,101. Those figures are reproduced here as the table prints them. No halftime score is stated, no season records are cited, and nothing about either team's year is inferred from the four cells.

The building was about a year and a half old that afternoon. This entry is not about the game. It is about who paid for the room the game was played in, and about a sentence in the Arizona constitution that was later pointed at the money.

THE VOTE AND THE BODY

The stadium was built and is owned by the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority. The Arizona Auditor General's most recent performance audit of the Authority, report 25-117, records that A.R.S. section 5-802 establishes it as a separate legal body with the rights, powers and immunities of a municipal corporation, and that it was established in 2000 after voters approved Proposition 302 that November.

The Authority's own account of its origin says Proposition 302 took 52 percent of the vote on 7 November 2000, and that the task force behind it had rejected an increase in the sales or income tax before arriving at the mechanism it put to voters. That account belongs to the body the proposition created, and it is reported here as the Authority's framing rather than as a finding. A background paper prepared by the City of San Diego's real estate assets department, compiling the Arizona arrangement for its own purposes, adds that Governor Jane Dee Hull signed Senate Bill 1220 on 24 April 2000 to create the Authority and carry a stadium financing package to the ballot.

WHAT IT COST, ACCORDING TO WHOM

Two government documents give different construction figures and this entry reconciles neither.

The Auditor General's earlier performance audit, report 09-04 of March 2009, puts the cost at 446.4 million dollars and divides it three ways: the Authority 299.4 million, the Arizona Cardinals 140.3 million, the City of Glendale 6.7 million. The San Diego paper puts the cost at 455 million dollars against an original projection of 355.3 million, and splits it 308 million public and 147 million private. Nothing here is added up, averaged or converted into a percentage by this entry; the two records are set down as each records itself.

Both agree on when the doors opened. The San Diego paper gives 12 August 2006, and the Authority's own timeline gives the same date for the Cardinals' first game in the building.

THE TWO LEVIES

The public money came from two new charges in Maricopa County. Report 09-04 describes them as a 1 percent increase in the county hotel bed tax and a 3.25 percent surcharge on car rentals. The surcharge is set by A.R.S. section 5-839, and the Arizona Supreme Court later set out its shape: a rental company owes the greater of 2.50 dollars per rental or 3.25 percent of its gross proceeds or gross income, with a flat 2.50 dollars on temporary replacement vehicles. The state treasurer distributes 2.50 dollars of each transaction to the Maricopa County Stadium District and the remainder to the Authority.

THE CLAUSE THAT WAS WRITTEN ABOUT ROADS

Article 9, section 14 of the Arizona constitution is an anti-diversion provision. As the court set it out, it bars money derived from fees, excises or licence taxes relating to the registration, operation or use of vehicles on the public highways or streets, or to the fuel or other energy that propels them, from being spent for anything other than highway and street purposes. It exists so that money raised from drivers stays on the roads drivers use. It says nothing about stadiums, and nothing about football.

In 2009, after the Department of Revenue refused its refund claim, Saban Rent-a-Car LLC sued. The argument was that a surcharge collected on renting a car is a charge relating to the use of vehicles on public highways, and so may not be spent on a football stadium, a spring training complex or a tourism campaign.

Three Arizona courts looked at that argument and did not agree with one another. The trial court held that the surcharge did not offend the dormant Commerce Clause of the federal constitution but did violate the state anti-diversion provision, and ruled for the rental companies. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the surcharge violated neither. The Arizona Supreme Court, in Saban Rent-a-Car LLC v. Arizona Department of Revenue, docket CV-18-0080-PR, decided on 25 February 2019, affirmed the Court of Appeals.

The majority opinion was written by Justice Timmer and joined by Chief Justice Bales, Vice Chief Justice Brutinel and Justices Pelander, Gould and Lopez. Its reading of the clause is narrow and mechanical: a levy relates to the operation or use of vehicles when it is a prerequisite to, or is triggered by, the legal operation or use of a vehicle on a public thoroughfare. A registration fee is such a levy. A fuel tax is such a levy. A charge that falls on the commercial transaction of renting is not, because renting a car is not operating one.

Justice Bolick agreed on the Commerce Clause question and disagreed on the state one. His separate opinion argued that the surcharge singles out vehicles built for public roads and comes to rest on the people who drive them, and that on the plain language and original purpose of the provision that is enough to bring it inside the clause.

This entry does not decide between them, and does not take a position on who ultimately bears the surcharge. The majority did not have to answer that question and the record here does not settle it.

WHY IT SITS IN THIS SERIES

Other entries in this series are pinned at courthouses, and every one of them is federal: an antitrust holding at the United States Supreme Court, cases in Los Angeles, Manhattan, Minneapolis, Chicago and Philadelphia, a statute at the Capitol. This one is a state constitution, argued in state courts, over a provision that was drafted for highway finance and had to be read against a building the drafters could not have had in mind. The league is nowhere in the case. What is in the case is the revenue stream underneath the building, and whether a state charter permitted it.

STATUS, SEPTEMBER 2026

This entry describes the building, its financing and the litigation as its sources record them, the most recent being the Auditor General's report 25-117 of November 2025. That report states that as of 30 June 2025 the outstanding principal on the Authority's single remaining stadium bond was 135 million dollars, that the Authority's revenues for the fiscal year exceeded 174 million dollars and its expenditures were approximately 136 million dollars, and that its operating cash balance exceeded required reserves by approximately 17.5 million dollars. Sources published after 2018 call the building State Farm Stadium; the title above uses the name it carried on the date of the game. Nothing in this entry establishes what the stadium is called today, who operates it now, what the Authority's finances look like in the current year, or whether the surcharge has since been altered by statute.

COORDINATE

33.529137 north, 112.264632 west, precision plus or minus 400 metres. One method, disclosed.

The United States Census Bureau's TIGER geocoder returned a single match for 1 Cardinals Drive, Glendale, AZ 85305, and the matched string was read in full: 1 CARDINALS DR, GLENDALE, AZ, 85305. It is a point on the access road, not the centre of the bowl, and the radius above is sized from the footprint of a stadium standing in a very large parcel rather than from the decimal places of the reading. A second query on the same street, at 1000 Cardinals Drive, returned empty, so it cannot be established from the geocoder alone whether the match is an address point or an interpolation across a short range. A boundary query at 9400 W Maryland Ave, Glendale, AZ 85305 matched and confirmed the geocoder was healthy in this ZIP.

No second independent record was reached. The Historical Marker Database returns twelve markers for Glendale and its neighbours and not one of them is at or near this site; the Glendale results are the Sahuaro Ranch group and two are in other towns entirely. Glendale is not a Socrata portal, and the catalogue endpoint for its open data returns 404. The gazetteer and mapping services that would normally supply a second reading are refused to this task's fetch tool rather than by their hosts. Under this series' standing practice, a single sourced method with the failures named is published rather than withheld.

COVER IMAGE

United States Air Force photograph by David Busby, 56th Fighter Wing, VIRIN 221106-F-QK476-0173, taken 6 November 2022 at the stadium and released into the public domain through the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service. It shows service members unfurling a flag across the field before an Arizona Cardinals home game, with the stands full behind them. It is not a photograph of the 2008 championship game and no photograph of that game is used here. The photographer's rank is given differently in two fields of the same record, as Senior Airman in the byline and as Staff Sergeant in the copyright line, and the VIRIN carries no rank to break the tie; the name is therefore given without one.

SECOND IMAGE

United States Customs and Border Protection photograph by Jerry Glaser, Office of Public Affairs, VIRIN 230207-H-AT513-113, public domain, showing an officer directing a non-intrusive inspection vehicle in a car park outside the stadium before the championship game of February 2023. The stadium is the ribbed drum at the right of the frame; the picture is of a security operation, not of a football game. The record's date-taken field reads 6 February 2023 while its caption and its VIRIN both read 7 February, and the caption and VIRIN are followed here.