The initial plans were modest. Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys owner, wanted to build a stadium that would cost around US$650 million (Dh2.3 billion). He asked local taxpayers to put up the first $325m and promised to pay the rest, no matter how much.
As the bills multiplied, Jones gave up on being modest. He wanted something unlike anything ever built, something glitzy and audacious, something that would make every Sunday seem like the Super Bowl.
Nearly $1bn of his own money later, Jones got his wish. And next Sunday, more than 100,000 fans will attend the NFL's showcase event, the Super Bowl, in his showplace, Cowboys Stadium.
"You can't take for granted how amazing it is," said Bill McConnell, the NFL's director of event operations. "We're really excited about those two things coming together."
While the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers will be taking centre stage, the stage itself will get plenty of attention, too.
The Statue of Liberty (46 meters tall) could stand on the 50-yard line and not touch the roof. From end to end, the football-shaped stadium is longer than the Empire State Building is tall (381 metres).
Helping fill that immense space is a centre-hung video board that holds the world's biggest high-definition television screens.
The TVs are the stadium's defining characteristic. They stretch between the 20-yard lines and are 22 metres high. No matter how many times you visit the place, you can't take your eyes off the screens.
There are other extraordinary features throughout the stadium.
Parts of the concourse feel like a five-star hotel. Museum-calibre artwork is sprinkled around. Hallways in the suite levels are decorated with pictures from Cowboys history, both famous moments and candid behind-the-scenes shots.
The biggest spenders can watch games from field-level suites or in the bars that the teams walk through to and from the field.
Even the outside is elegant, with curved glass that brightens and darkens depending on the amount of sunshine, and end-zone doors capable of sliding open like patio doors; they'll be closed for the Super Bowl, as will the roof.
League owners picked this stadium to host a Super Bowl two years before it was even ready for business. There was talk of rewarding Jones for such a major investment, but don't underestimate the profit that can be generated by a crowd of more than 100,000 people.
Trucks began arriving at 6am three weeks ago to start adding the Super Bowl touches. As much as the building was designed with this game in mind, there's still work to be done, like putting 13km of fencing and 28,000 square metres of tented areas in the parking lots. Workers have painted the field and added about 15,000 temporary seats, filling pretty much every spot with a decent sight line, including the end-zone decks that had been giant display cases for sponsors.
Tickets carry a face value of $600 to $1,200. Those include seats. There are also $350 tickets to stand inside the building, and $200 tickets to roam a party plaza on the east side of the stadium. If this nose-against-the-glass experiment works, it could become a Super Bowl staple.
The Packers and Steelers arrive in town tomorrow. Both will be at the stadium on Tuesday for the Media Day circus. Since neither team has played here, it will be the first time in the building for most players.
"I'm excited to see what the stadium's got," John Kuhn, the Green Bay running back, said. "They said it's wild, so I'm really pumped up."
Some say the place looks like a spaceship. It's also been dubbed JerryWorld.
But it carries the simple name Cowboys Stadium, giving Jones another way of marketing what Forbes magazine considers the most valuable professional sports franchise in North America.
The only downer for Jones is that his team is not playing in this game.
He hoped to become the first Super Bowl host to also participate and wasn't shy about saying so.
The Cowboys proved to be such a big disappointment that he fired his coach midway through the season, after a loss to the Packers. Now those Packers will be using the Cowboys' locker room as the NFC representative in the Super Bowl. As for the Steelers, this will be their eighth Super Bowl, tying Dallas' record.
"Great tradition, outstanding teams," Jones said this week. "With what the Packers are about and what the Steelers are about, it makes a great game. If you're in my shoes right now as far as Cowboys Stadium is concerned, I'm really proud that they're going to be there. I'm proud for north Texas."
* Associated Press
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The Perfect Couple
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Jack Reynor
Creator: Jenna Lamia
Rating: 3/5
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
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A Bad Moms Christmas
Dir: John Lucas and Scott Moore
Starring: Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell, Susan Sarandon, Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines
Two stars
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
