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In February, Donald Trump made history as the first sitting U.S. president to attend the Super Bowl.
Trump had a busy day. That morning, he played golf with Tiger Woods in Florida, then boarded Air Force One en route to a naval base in New Orleans. On the flight, he announced Feb. 9 as “Gulf of America Day.” The commander in chief only spent about five and a half hours in New Orleans, and left the Superdome early before the Philadelphia Eagles hoisted the Lombardi Trophy.
It was a quick trip, but an expensive one for the government. The Secret Service hotel bill alone for the trip totaled more than $115,000, according to records the agency provided to Front Office Sports. The agency turned over its hotel costs—but not other expenses like meals, travel, or agent pay—after a Freedom of Information Act request from FOS.
Trump this year has placed a bigger focus on sports than his predecessors or during his first term, and his early domestic travel has been heavy on sports. In addition to the Super Bowl and frequent golf trips, Trump went to the Daytona 500, NCAA Division I men’s wrestling championship, UFC 314 and 316, Club World Cup final, US Open men’s singles final, and a Yankees game on Sept. 11. The US Open had extra security measures on the day Trump attended, leading to a roughly 45-minute delay for the match; the Yankees then warned fans to arrive three hours before first pitch on Sept. 11.
As for the Secret Service, a spokesperson tells FOS that for any presidential visit, agents typically arrive days before Trump to prepare the site. Axios reported the Secret Service was already in New Orleans five days ahead of the game on Feb. 4, and that local officials had expected several hundred of its agents. (The agency employs thousands, but the spokesperson declined to clarify the number of agents or length of their trip.)
Nearly all of the expenses listed were for hotels or booking services. The payments, totaling $123,411.81, include:
- More than $65,000 to nine hotels, three of which it paid more than $16,000 each. Close to $18,000 went to a Margaritaville Resort.
- Two payments of about $25,000 each to lodging services.
- More than $7,000 to the NFL.
In past years, the Secret Service has worked the Super Bowl without the president in attendance. The agency led security at the game in 2024. Security was also heightened for the 2025 game after the deadly attack in New Orleans ahead of the Sugar Bowl less than two months earlier. But the agency did not have a major role in special event security operations this year, instead focusing on the president and his traveling party.
The Secret Service provided FOS with a detailed list of approved travel expenses incurred by the Presidential Protective Division on the Feb. 9 trip to New Orleans. The traveling party of “protectees” listed Trump, his son Eric and wife Lara, his daughter Ivanka, one of his grandchildren, then-National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and chief of staff Susie Wiles. Other members of the administration and Republican lawmakers who traveled to the game on Air Force One were not designated as “protectees” in the records provided by the agency. The director of the Secret Service, Sean Curran, attended the game, and ran a recruitment ad inside the stadium during pregame that reportedly cost the agency $2 million to produce.
The Secret Service paid $65,400.74 directly to hotels for overnight and meeting rooms. The agency listed nine different hotels in its expense report. With booking in New Orleans competitive and expensive because of the Big Game, several hotels were located further away in cities like Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Biloxi, Mississippi, which are both over an hour’s drive from the Superdome.
The largest hotel sums went to the L’Auberge Casino and Hotel in Baton Rouge for $20,792.97, Margaritaville Resort for $17,799.42, and the Marriott in Baton Rouge for $16,590. (The location of the Margaritaville Resort wasn’t specified, but there is one in Biloxi.) L’Auberge is a four-star property ranked as the No. 1 hotel in Baton Rouge. The agency also charged $696.36 to the four-star IP Casino Resort Spa in Biloxi. The spokesperson says agents who stayed at casino hotels were “absolutely not” gambling.
Agents can sometimes stay further away from the presidential visit site because all hotels are booked in an effort to stay within the government rates, the Secret Service spokesperson says. The February 2025 government rate for daily lodging set by the General Services Administration was $179 for New Orleans and $110 for Baton Rouge and Biloxi. The rates were not adjusted to reflect the region hosting the Super Bowl. One manager at a hotel where the Secret Service stayed in Baton Rouge tells FOS that both overnight and meeting rooms cost several hundred dollars per night during the Super Bowl.
In addition to booking directly, the Secret Service secured hotel rooms through a group travel agency called Gulf South Travel Services. The Secret Service paid the company $26,741.97 to buy from their block of rooms. The federal agency also sent $24,203.05 to a vendor identified as “Cromwell Accounting.” The Secret Service spokesperson confirmed these payments were also for lodging but could not elaborate on what services Cromwell provided. Several companies with “Cromwell” in the name, including Trump’s preferred law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, said they were not the company paid here. A small portion of those charges was a fee for “unfulfilled rooms.”
Finally, the Presidential Protective Division received approval for a $7,066.05 expense to the “NFL Agency Account” for “Pipe & drape and fencing.”
The provided expenses are a window into the costs of Trump’s trip to the Super Bowl, but they don’t paint the full picture. How much the Secret Service spent on staffing or meals, bringing agents to New Orleans, or gas money driving back and forth to hotels in Baton Rouge and Biloxi was not included in the released documents. Nor did they show any potential costs incurred by other local or federal agencies who aided in protecting the president at the game.
FOS requested an itemized list of expenses from Trump’s visit, and the agency says the four pages of costs it released are all that are responsive to the request, with no documents withheld. FOS is seeking additional details or documents from the agency.
The Secret Service employs thousands of people and has an annual budget of more than $3 billion—a number that has grown significantly in recent years. The agency is likely spending millions on Trump’s sports travel this year, considering how many sports trips the president has taken and how hotel stays only represent a portion of the overall cost of each trip.
The president has already said he will attend the Ryder Cup, marking his third major sports event in the month of September and at least his ninth since resuming office in January. Trump is also likely to make appearances at the men’s World Cup next summer and the Olympics in 2028, both of which are being hosted by the U.S. and come with $1.6 billion in federal security funding.
High-profile acts of political violence have increased in the past year, including an attempt at Trump’s life at a rally last summer. In the wake of last week’s killing of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, the Trump administration has asked Congress for another $58 million in security funding for the executive and judicial branches.
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