Super Bowl logistics czar Jerry Anderson ranks University of Phoenix Stadium among the most accommodating sites he has dealt with in his 23 years as the NFL’s point man for the league’s championship game.
“Each stadium has its own features and we adapt to them,” said Anderson, a senior principal for HOK Sport and the league’s trusted consultant for the Super Bowl.
“It’s really situational,” Anderson said. “The field tray area in Glendale gives us a very distinct advantage, and we can open and close the roof. Those are two wonderful features.”
The plan as of last week was to leave the roof open for the game.
The portable natural grass field, the first completely movable playing surface in the NFL, rolls in and out of the stadium’s south end in 70 minutes. It will be moved inside for Tuesday’s media day and taken back out that night to grab one more day of sunlight on Wednesday. The field will be moved back inside on Thursday and remain in place through game day.
“We have it inside when we need it,” Anderson said. “We want the media to see it and the players to walk on it.”
When the field is put inside for good, pregame and halftime performers have a three-day window of opportunity to rehearse in the space outside the stadium where the field is stored when it is not in use, Anderson said.
Reliant Stadium in Houston, site of the 2004 Super Bowl, has a portable field but it is composed of small trays of grass installed by forklifts. “We could only go with one installation date and it was done before media day,” Anderson said. “The field stayed in place from that time forward.”
On game day in Glendale, the pieces for the huge portable stage supporting halftime act Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will be stored in that space before being wheeled into the stadium and quickly assembled. It’s a much better situation compared with the 2006 Super Bowl at Ford Field.
University of Phoenix Stadium gives the NFL
more options for preparing for the Super Bowl.
“Detroit was an enormous challenge,” Anderson said. “We had to store the stage at Comerica Park and shuffle it all across the street.”
University of Phoenix Stadium seats about 63,000 for Cardinals games. For the Super Bowl, the building will be set up in its “extravaganza seating” mode, pushing capacity well above 70,000.
HOK Sport and New York architect Peter Eisenman designed a flexible stadium where 5,000 to 7,000 additional seats, bench seating on risers and banquet-style tables, can be set up in the end zones for the Super Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl and the BCS championship.
For the Super Bowl, the NFL created an ultra-premium, all-inclusive ticket for 1,100 patrons sitting on the stadium floor in the south end. The $2,000 ticket includes a cushioned chair, table space, a buffet meal, waitservice and private rest rooms, which are portable trailers set up immediately outside the stadium. The permanent rest rooms on the floor are not available because that’s where the player tunnels are, Anderson said.
The one-of-a-kind view should be similar to the patrons sitting in the end zone suites at Qwest Field in Seattle, said Peter Sullivan, Global Spectrum’s stadium manager in Glendale.
Four private spaces on the stadium’s event and club levels have been carved into Super Bowl-branded premium areas for the NFL’s “On Location” corporate guest hospitality program. Some 3,000 people will be eating and drinking within those temporary walls before heading to their seats, Anderson said.
Outside the stadium, the NFL is focusing on keeping wait times to a minimum as fans enter the secured perimeter and walk through the “magnatometer tents” to be scanned for weapons and other items not allowed inside the building. The secured perimeter, installed at a minimum of 300 feet from stadium entrances, contains an eight-foot fence and concrete barriers stretching for two miles around the stadium.
“We’re going to try and move security lines more quickly,” Anderson said. “We project average waits to range from none to 20 minutes.”
| Turnkey Sports Poll |
| The following are results of the Turnkey Sports Poll taken in December. The survey covered more than 800 senior-level sports industry executives spanning professional and college sports. |
 Before the Super Bowl, many NFL championships have been played in subzero outdoor conditions. Should the NFL give more consideration to awarding Super Bowls to open-air stadiums in the North? |
| No | 61.16% |
| Yes | 37.95% |
| No response/Not sure | 0.89% |
| Has the hype for the Super Bowl gotten too big? |
| No | 54.02% |
| Yes | 44.20% |
| No response/Not sure | 1.79% |
| Source: Turnkey Sports & Entertainment in conjunction with SportsBusiness Journal. Turnkey Intelligence specializes in research, measurement and lead generation for agencies, brands and properties. Visit www.turnkeyse.com. |
For the second consecutive year, the NFL Experience, the league’s portable theme park and Super Bowl merchandising bonanza, and the league’s official tailgate party, are located on site. The two tented properties take up the entire west side parking lot.
Before the 2007 game in Miami, the NFL Experience was housed in the host city’s convention center, which in some cases was miles from the Super Bowl stadium.
“The NFL showed great wisdom in putting the energy and excitement of that attraction closer to the game location,” Anderson said. “It’s a great way to have the total package, come early in the day and enjoy that for a couple hours.”
Getting fans back to their vehicles without getting lost after the game is a big challenge because more often than not they are not taking the same path they took to get into the stadium. “It’s not like retracing bread crumbs,” Anderson said.
“We are setting up pylons 30 feet high aligning with the color code of the parking lots,” he said. “In the darkness, all they have to do is remember the color of the pylon. We will distribute location cards inside the gates and have information booths.”
Thousands of Super Bowl attendees will have to park in satellite lots and take shuttle buses to the stadium, but Anderson said all vehicles should be accommodated within a half-mile from the venue.
Across the street, parking lots will be used at Jobing.com arena, where the NHL Coyotes play, and the Westgate entertainment district. Two nearby fields, one controlled by the Cardinals and one by the city of Glendale, have been converted to temporary lots.
Global Spectrum plans to have several facility managers from arenas it operates in six other markets on site to support the Super Bowl operation. In addition, personnel who have worked the Super Bowl at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta and Reliant Stadium in Houston, and others from Soldier Field and Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, site of the 2009 event, will help out.
