SBJ: What’s new with this year’s Super Bowl?
Supovitz: The greatest distinguishing characteristic of this year’s Super Bowl is the incredible stadium we find ourselves in ... features a retractable field. The field goes outside the building and is brought in for the games themselves. For us that involves an enormous amount of choreography. We have media day inside, we have got rehearsals inside, and of course the game. We also have to schedule a move from outside to in on Tuesday, take the field back out, care for it on Wednesday and bring it back on Thursday. In addition to that we are going to be doing a significant amount of construction on the south end zone, which is the side that the field slides in on, so we are adding several thousand seats on that side that you can’t install until the field is in for good.
SBJ: Last year the NFL looked to put more of its stamp on Super Bowl week activities. Will that continue?
Supovitz: We are very focused on creating events that both local and inbound fans can enjoy, because we do know that somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 fans will come to the host city of the Super Bowl. So we have added two things this year. One is called NFL After Dark. It is NFL Experience, but after the sun goes down on Thursday night, it becomes the ultimate club, it is really something for the 20- and 30-somethings to come down and enjoy. The event that is very associated with families and the hard-core fans becomes a little bit more for casual fans looking for fun things to do on Thursday night.
The other thing we are introducing is Super Bowl Saturday night. Last year we worked with the [Miami] host committee to create an event on Saturday night, and that event was a host committee concert followed by a Super Bowl fireworks show. This time the event is NFL presented, a free concert anybody can come to.
SBJ: Do you see the NFL settling on a rotation of Super Bowl cities?
Supovitz: If you look at the history of the Super Bowl in the last decade and what is coming up, you will see some repeats, but you don’t see a rotation.
SBJ: What else is new?
Supovitz: One of the things we are starting to look at is a Super Bowl customer service program. We recognize that at the Super Bowl, there are high expectations. People spend a lot of money to be there and we want to make sure the experience they have, not just in the stadium, but in the entire region, it is the best it can be. This year’s program is twofold. One is an information gathering process, where we are evaluating a benchmark for what customer service delivery is, both in-stadium and outside, from the airport to the hotels to the taxi cabs. The second thing we are doing is instituting a training program for (any stadium worker with) game-day credentials.
SBJ: Is it really the NFL’s job to ensure someone has a nice hotel stay or car rental?
Supovitz: I think it is. When someone gets off a plane at the Super Bowl city, they don’t differentiate between whether it is us delivering the experience, the host committee delivering the experience or the city delivering the experience. It is their Super Bowl experience.
— Daniel Kaplan
