New Orleans Takes Super Bowl Handoff From Las Vegas

Hours after the confetti fell on Super Bowl 58 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, members of the NFL, the Las Vegas Super Bowl Host Committee, the New Orleans Super Bowl Host Committee and others gathered at a press conference early on February 12.

The event was a handoff from one committee to the next, literally, as the members of the different organization passed a football down the line until it arrived in the hands of the Louisiana contingent. When Saints owner Gayle Benson passed the ball to Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser, it all became very real.

“When I put my hands on that football it made it surreal and it made my mind jump ahead and say, ‘We gotta get home and get to work,’” said Nungesser, who begins his ninth year as lieutenant governor. “The governor here (Joe Lombardo) made a good pitch for getting the game back to Vegas soon and they did a hell of a job. We like to tell people in Louisiana that when we meet them, you meet a friend for life. We treat strangers like family. And the people from Vegas really were friendly and did a great job.”

New Orleans is now on the clock for Super Bowl 59, which will take place February 9, 2025, at the Caesars Superdome.

“People are always going to be really excited about the Super Bowl,” said Marcus Brown, chair of the New Orleans Super Bowl Host Committee. “Vegas is a wonderful venue and it’s got a lot of interesting things for people to do. But when you come to New Orleans, everybody who’s been there finds something special about it that they love. The food, the culture, the music, the interesting venues. And then when they go back, they want to go back to those places.”

New Orleans had a strong presence in Las Vegas all week, anchored by its large display next to radio row at the Mandalay Bay. The display included New Orleans-style architecture, screens playing the city’s greatest Super Bowl moments and of course plenty of king cake to celebrate Mardi Gras.

“We visit the Super Bowl every year,” said Jay Cicero, president and chief executive officer of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation and the New Orleans Super Bowl Host Committee. “We don’t attend the game every year, but we do go to the future host meetings and meet with other host committees to talk about what they’re doing and what they’re not doing. And we pick up on ideas. Now, the year before we’re hosting, we attend a lot of events and see what we can apply to New Orleans.

“Sometimes, what you learn not to do is as important as learning what to do. And so this media center is a big opportunity for New Orleans. We learn a lot from other cities. They learn a lot from us. It’s really kind of a collaborative effort once you’ve been awarded the game, you’re not really competing against each other anymore.”

Good to See an Old Friend

New Orleans will host its record-tying 11th Super Bowl next year, joining Miami at the top of the list of most frequent host cities. The city held its first Super Bowl in 1970 and for decades never went more than seven years without hosting one. But next year will only be the second time since 2002 the Super Bowl comes to town.

“There are a lot of other new stadiums and new cities that have taken the opportunity to host,” Brown said. “So you think about where the Super Bowl’s been and the NFL has had the opportunity to bring that game to cities that have not had it before but have built stadiums that can now accommodate an event like that. We’ve had 10, so it’s hard to complain when you’ve had that many. But now it heightens the fact that people are anticipating it coming back.”

Cicero says with the community having welcomed the game so many times in the past, it typically hasn’t caused a wild celebration when the game is announced to be coming back. However, this time the buzz has picked up.

“New Orleans is about history and culture and we have produced these videos with the NFL that show the history of the 10 Super Bowls together and it really pumps the fans up,” Cicero said. “The Super Bowl brings people together more than any other event that we’ve ever done. All these other events, they’re great. But when you talk about Super Bowl, people get genuinely excited and that’s what makes it so special.”

Another reason for the extra excitement is that New Orleans was supposed to host this year’s Super Bowl. However, Mardi Gras fell during the same time frame as the game, which allowed Vegas to step up while New Orleans waited another year.

“Once the NFL picked the date (for Super Bowl 58), we knew immediately that it was going to conflict with Mardi Gras,” Brown said. “I think that’s when the power of your relationships come into play. The first thing you want to do is have a conversation with the NFL and see if there’s a way for us to resolve this. And they were cooperative and constructive in that process, as were the Saints and the city.”

The date change turned out to be a blessing in disguise for New Orleans and the NFL, as pushing the game back a year will allow the last piece of the $535 million renovations to the Superdome to be finished this summer. Cicero says the renovations are important to not only the Saints, but to New Orleans and Louisiana as a whole as the Superdome will celebrate its 50th year of existence in 2025.

“We’ve hosted the NCAA Men’s Final Four six times in that facility,” Cicero said. “And because of the seating configuration and a lot of people sitting on the floor area, the fans coming out of the lower bowl are crunched into a very small concourse. This renovation allows for expanded concourses all the way around the facility.”

Another issue the Superdome has faced is getting people in and out of the facility in a timely manner. The Superdome is at the end of the hospitality district where 22,000 hotel rooms are located, meaning all the fans walking to the stadium come in on the same side.

“They are renovating three of the entry areas and creating three more large entrances with vertical transportation to be able to get people in the Superdome quicker, enable them to leave quicker and to be able to have this concourse space where they can have a variety of food and beverage,” Cicero said. “We didn’t have that for 45 years until these renovations started.”

“It would have been logistically impossible to have Mardi Gras and the Super Bowl at the same time,” Brown added. “Although many people would have probably enjoyed trying to do both.”

Reintroducing New Orleans

As new stadiums in Los Angeles and Las Vegas have hosted the Super Bowl in recent years, New Orleans is ready for its reintroduction.

“We understand as these new cities come in they’re going to have an opportunity to get in that rotation and they may displace somebody else,” Brown said. “What we want to remind people of is that we should consistently be in the rotation, not because we deserve it without earning it, but because you can’t have an experience anywhere else that matches New Orleans. We believe that when people are reminded of what they love about New Orleans — what they love about having events in the city — that hosting this Super Bowl is a chance to showcase the city and audition for the next time we do it.”

Cicero has walked the Superdome floor on many occasions during his nearly three decades at the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation: “I get chills just thinking about it,” he said. “Every time it just astounds you. And then all the history associated with it, the unique shape of it, the location downtown. It’s beloved and it’s part of New Orleans history and culture, which is the theme of what we always try and sell. The city has had a love affair with the Saints since 1967 and the Super Bowl since 1970.”

While the love between the city and the Super Bowl has never left, the 12 years since last hosting the game has seen logistical changes that Cicero picked up on while in Las Vegas.

“There were streets blocked everywhere and not just road closures, but facility closures and the push out of secure perimeters,” Cicero said. “Our biggest challenges will be security and that we’ve got a tight footprint downtown to fit all the things the NFL wants to do. So we’ve talked to the business community about what’s happening and our security leadership is working with the NFL to minimize the effect on traffic downtown, but also provide a secure facility for the game itself.”

Nungesser says hosting the Super Bowl has long-term effects on tourism for people watching on television.

“We’ll see the travel increase for years after because there’s always a party in New Orleans,” Nungesser said. “Next year, having Super Bowl and then Mardi Gras following a month later is surely going to up the visitation throughout that carnival season. Like any city, we’ve got a lot of work to do to clean up the city, make it shine and make sure we come away from this thing having hosted an incredible event.”

“I just believe that when it’s all said and done, people are going to be reminded that if there’s going to be a list of places to go, we want this place to continue to be on the list,” Brown added. “And that’s the thing that we’re going to remind people of. You can go to other places, but you need to come back here on occasion.”