New Orleans Super Bowl to-do list: potholes, parking, security and millions in fundraising (2024)

On the desk of Jay Cicero, head of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation, is the Super Bowl equivalent of a battle plan.

Instead of battalion leaders and troop movements, the poster-sized sheet laid out details of the army he and other New Orleans civic leaders will deploy to get the city ready for America's largest annual entertainment event.

Hotels blocks are being booked, potholes need to be filled, parking spots leased and volunteers by the thousands organized into a force that can ensure everything runs smoothly when Super Bowl LIX arrives in the Caesars Superdome on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025. And with six months to go, the city and its top tourism officials — organized into 15 separate committees — have a lengthy to-do list.

"There are hundreds of deliverables, a timeline for each committee and there's a lot of overlap," Cicero said during an interview at his Bucktown office to provide an update on the process. "It's a pretty complex operation."

The much-talked-about infrastructure upgradesacross New Orleans account for just one part of the preparations for the mega event. Less noticed but equally important tasks are going on behind the scenes.

The Super Bowl is designated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as National Special Security Events, which adds a big layer of federal security planning and coordination. And while no sitting president has attended a Super Bowl, three vice presidents have shown up along with armies of VIPs and celebrities.

The host city's plan must follow a well-honed NFL playbook, but leaders like Cicero and GNO Inc. CEO Michael Hecht, who Gov. Jeff Landry tasked with helping coordinate parts of the project, have to get it all done. Jon Barker, the NFL executive in charge of events, said things are going smoothly so far.

"Everything is tracking well," Barker said Thursday.

Cicero said his team will hold planning meetings with the NFL in August, September and December. Then, in early January, the full NFL circus rolls into town and prepares to take over a large part of the city's hospitality sector.

That will include the entire Ernest N. Morial Convention Center for "The NFL Experience," as well as related events hosted by some of the NFL's 54 official Super Bowl sponsors and licensees. The NFL will take over the Superdome to accommodate sponsors, including Apple (the halftime show sponsor), as well as the huge additional media contingent led by Fox, which will broadcast the game.

The Super Bowl week commences with Opening Night at the Superdome the Monday before gameday. The NFL brings in its own architect, Populous, and event construction firm, BaAM Productions, to handle most of those operations.

Lasting upgrades

To be sure, the infrastructure workplan looms large for the city and its residents.

Hecht has describedthe Super Bowl as a "forcing function" to make long overdue infrastructure repairs that will be a lasting legacy for the city. His group has now put up a website to inform residentsabout how more than 500 individual projects — from street repairs to lighting upgrades to beautification efforts, such as murals to cover up blighted buildings — might cause disruptions to their lives over the next several months.

They also have hired The Tobler Company, which was the manager for early parts of the the Superdome's $550 million renovation project, to oversee that complex coordination effort on a daily basis.

The Superdome upgrade is now completed, though there is a punch list of final items before the building is certified and officially handed back to ASM Global, which runs the facility on behalf of the state, said Evan Holmes, the company's general manager in New Orleans. The handover is scheduled for Aug. 15 ahead of the Saints pre-season game on Aug. 25 against the Tennessee Titans.

Holmes said the main challenge over the coming months will be completing their final preparations without disturbing scheduled events, including the Saints' nine home games, the Taylor Swift Eras Tour dates at the end of October, the Bayou Classic in November and the Sugar Bowl in January.

"We have quite the laundry list to complete," he said. That includes power washing, restriping parking areas, landscaping and fixing dings caused by construction.

Get a room

Hotel rooms are another large piece of the puzzle. The 2024 Super Bowl in Las Vegas was a bonanza for the hotel sector, with peak rates for top hotels of $2,000 a night.

Cicero and the NFL have signed contracts with 87 area hotels — mostly in the downtown area, but also in other parts of the city and in neighboring parishes — requiring them to block off tens of thousands of rooms for at least the three-day Super Bowl weekend.

The NFL will inform those hotels by the end of August which groups they have been assigned, whether it is NFL staff, the two teams who will be competing, sponsor companies, some of the 6,000 media representatives and so on.

"The challenge after allocation then becomes finding rooms for other groups and finding venues where other groups (apart from official sponsors) can organize their events," said Walt Leger, head of tourism agency New Orleans & Company and chair of the Super Bowl hotels committee.

Hotels that have not been part of the official NFL roster are fairly certain to be sold out for Super Bowl weekend as well.

Zach Kupperman, one of the owners of the Hotel Saint Vincent in the Garden District, for example, said his hotel was entirely booked months ago by a Fortune 100 company. The challenge for hotels outside the main tourist areas —including The Drifter Motel on Tulane Avenue, which he also part owns — is to judge when to lock in bookings for a once-in-a-decade opportunity.

"It's subjective but probably a good time would be a few months out, maybe December, when people are really getting excited about the playoffs," he said.

Getting around

As with hotels, the NFL closely controls transportation and parking operations. The Chicago-based SP Plus Corporation runs ground transportation and parking for the NFL's Super Bowl events.

Still, there is a huge local opportunity for vehicle and parking providers for gameday and for several other events around the Super Bowl, said Randy Philipson, head of Tulane University's campus facilities and chair of the Super Bowl transportation committee.

Thousands of courtesy cars, limousines, motor coaches and school buses need to be organized to ferry NFL and sponsor company honchos, as well as staff working events and others. The drivers' credentials need to be verified, staging areas have to be organized and parking lots secured.

Philipson's group is also coordinating with New Orleans police and other agencies to work out traffic flow.

"This is the third Super Bowl I've worked in some capacity or other and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger," Philipson said.

As well as overseeing the entire event, Cicero is in charge of raising the money to actually pay for hosting — estimated to be about $20 million. So far, there are three big sponsors: Entergy Corporation, whose top lawyer, Marcus Brown, is chair of the hosting committee, Ochsner Health and Chevron.

Chevron is also organizing the 5,000 volunteers who will sport branded t-shirts and post up around the city to help visitors with directions and other questions about events and attractions. Leah Brown at Chevron chairs that effort. she said applications are open until the end of October.

Cicero said the NFL sells them around 1,000 Super Bowl tickets and 10 of the 165 Caesars Superdome suites, which the sports foundation can sell at a profit to companies or individuals to help meet their costs.

One of the biggest expenses is hosting the media and using the opportunity to sell the city of New Orleans to the world, both as tourist destination and as a place where companies can do business, said Mark Romig, New Orleans & Company chief marketing officer and chair of the Super Bowl media and public relations committee.

He said it reminds him of the World's Fair in New Orleans in 1984, when he was in charge of protocol and guest relations.

"That was the last major restoration of the French Quarter sidewalks and it led to the rehabilitation of the Warehouse District, the beginnings of the Convention Center and really opened up the river for the people to use," he said. "It really pulled the citizenry together."