Assisted by the hype around Super Bowl 50, Aramark set a merchandise sales record at last year’s NFL Experience flagship store. Can that ever be topped?
“With the right teams, maybe,” said Carl Mittleman, Aramark president of sports and entertainment. “We may not set financial records this year, but we’re setting the bar higher as far as the experience every year. … We are prepared to sell four or five times as much merchandise and food and beverage as we sell there [Houston’s NRG Stadium] for a regular-season game.”
Aramark is handling merchandise, food and beverage sales for Super Bowl LI. Its rights encompass the George Brown Convention Center, which will house the NFL Experience, and the adjoining 35,000-square-foot merchandise emporium. Aramark’s also handling merchandise, food and beverage at NRG Stadium. Since Aramark services those venues when it’s not the Super Bowl, Mittleman says his company has a home-field advantage of sorts.
Aramark also will service merchandise sales at around 18 Houston hotels.
“The mindset for a lot of people was that this year couldn’t be as big, but our thought was that if we take some risk, it can be bigger,” said Ryan DiNunzio, New Era’s senior marketing manager for football, adding that his company has already shipped more units available in Houston than last year in San Francisco.
New Era is introducing a different cap Monday through Friday, including a limited-edition (400 units) battery-powered cap with an LED-lit NFL shield logo, priced at $180 and only available at the NFL X store.
The “NFL Shop at Super Bowl, Presented by Visa” store at the NFL Experience will sell more than 1,000 items, including 800 different styles of shirts and 80 different styles of caps. It will be open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. most days.
New Era also is looking to create and certify with Guinness World Records the world’s largest cap wall mosaic (of the New Era logo), using 2,151 caps. For the second consecutive year, the NFL X store will include a VIP boutique, which fans spending more than $300 can access. Exclusive products will include some of the blingy items from last year along with some “Texas chic” regional specialties, like Western belt buckles and a Super Bowl-logoed BBQ smoker for $1,300.
The boutique will feature player appearances, fashion shows and cooking demonstrations. A concert also is planned for the store.
Reflecting industry trends, domestic/homegating products will be available in abundance, and customization will be widely available.
Aramark’s stadium sales efforts begin by building a 20,000-square-foot store on the floor of the adjoining NRG Arena on Monday, which will remain open through the Super Bowl. Across the stadium/arena complex there will be around 50 retail locations with 200 points of sale. Aramark is augmenting with eight trailers and tents outside of NRG Stadium, and will offer Super Bowl jersey customization on site for the first time.
