Super Bowl XLVI's Real Winner? Indianapolis!
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The site of this year's Super Bowl was within walking distance of many hotels and all of downtown Indy.
Sunday’s Super Bowl was the most watched television event in American history, tuned into by nearly half of all households and at peak time, more than 117,000,000 viewers. Ad rates were $3.5 million per 30 second spot, and while viewers debated who was better, an overweight Volkswagen obsessed dog or Clint Eastwood, the real beneficiary of all that airtime and all those viewers was the city of Indianapolis.
“Ten years from now, I think we will look back on this one single day as the tipping point in tourism and perception for the city,” said Chris Gahl, Vice President of Marketing for the Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association.
Several years ago when the city decided to go for the 2011 Game (it ended up with 2012), the bid process required $25 million in non-taxpayer funds, and several big Indy area companies, including Eli Lilly and Cummins, stepped up and provided it in the form of donations. Last weekend paid off that investment handsomely on both sides of Gahl’s equation: Conventions and Visitors.
Leisure travelers were treated to a week of eye opening coverage of the city’s unsung charms on major networks, minor networks, radio and the internet. Establishing shots featured some of the city’s most iconic attractions, including the world’s largest children’s museum, the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the country’s second largest collection of urban monuments after Washington, DC. Sports talk radio hosts on New York’s ultra-popular WFAN seemed to spend as much time discussing how shocked they were by the high quality of their meals (especially at the city’s beloved St. Elmo’s steak house, where Eli Manning fueled up for his Super Bowl victory) as the teams involved. This scenario was repeated all over the country as visiting media, many of them new to the city, were won over.
“We’ve always been a favorite of the sports media because of our many huge events, and some sports reporters come several times a year,” said Gahl. “But to see how surprised and how impressed the mainstream press was with our arts, culture, dining, and hospitality, that’s a real feather in our cap.” I personally was not surprised, since I have had the pleasure of visiting Indy a few times, and last year included it on my list of the nation’s best cities for weekend tourism visits.
The Super Bowl is just the latest in a series of accomplishments for a city that decided to actively tie its fortunes to sports about two decades ago, helping to pioneer the then revolutionary concept of downtown stadiums. As a result, a city that had already hosted the world’s largest one day sporting event, the Indianapolis 500 (over 300,000 spectators), for over a century, added the Pan Am Games, another huge auto race (NASCAR’s Brickyard 400), has hosted the annual NFL combine for 20 years, held golf’s Senior PGA Championship last year, has held the PGA Championship and has the BMW Championship this year, and perhaps most importantly of all, became the only city with a contract to be the recurring host for “March Madness.” The NCAA holds basketball’s Final Four here, for both the Men’s and Women’s tournaments, alternating every two years. Many of these facilities also have public components: you can ride in Indy cars driven by actual Indy 500 race drivers at the track; tour the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum; run on the famed oval as part of the nation’s largest half marathon; visit the NCAA Hall of Champions; take an hour-long tour of Lucas Oil Stadium, the Super Bowl venue, including the field, locker rooms and press box; and much more. The city is also home to NFL and NBA teams, numerous US Olympic Teams including USA Diving, USA Gymnastics and USA Track and Field, which frequently host major championships in these disciplines, as well as the headquarters of the NCAA and thus virtually all college sports. It is the most sports centric city in the nation, if not the world. But as viewers all over the country found out last week, there is a lot more to Indy than sports.
A Super Bowl first, Indy erected a massive "4-lane" zip line ride through the heart of downtown, which proved extremely popular.
While the media exposure surrounding the big game and word of mouth from the 150,000 visitors should help Indy attract more tourists, the city may win even bigger on the convention side, thanks in part to all the experience and infrastructure it has hosting huge, complex events. “About 65% of the ticket holders for this year’s Super Bowl were corporate decision makers,” said Gahl. “And I think our message to them is very clear – if we can host the world’s largest single-day sporting event for over a century, the Final Four regularly, and the Super Bowl –we can handle your convention.”
To make that point, it was a priority Indy get it right, and not end up like the Athens Olympics, perceived as dysfunctional. In this regards, they hit a home run. The entire downtown was cordoned off and turned into a weeklong “fan zone,” complete with the interactive NFL Village and NFL Experience, free concerts, autograph sessions, celebrity sightings, food and beer kiosks, and countless parties, bars, eateries and ad hoc novelties, from the makeshift Bud Light Hotel to the Huddle temporary nightclub. Rolling Stone Magazine and Bacardi threw a party the night before the big game with concerts by four major recording artists, and not to be outdone, Maxim Magazine partnered with Patron Tequila to throw a star studded bash the same night, while Playboy’s famed Super Bowl pre-party was Friday night – all three soirees commanded four figure admission fees. A 4-lane zip line ran over the heart of downtown, and every single spot sold out, although it was open the entire week. Streets were staffed with a sea of uniformed volunteers to answer questions and direct visitors, the city put on 4-hour classes for anyone who might interact with guests to preach “Hoosier Hospitality,” and everything from the jet ways at the airport (a $1.1 billion state of the art facility just over 3 years old) to billboards to free maps was festooned with the game logo and welcomed guests very visibly to the Super Bowl City. When volunteers repeatedly punctuated their advice with “Have a Super Day!” they actually sounded like they meant it.
As a result, everyone I spoke to – even disgruntled Patriots fans on the flight back to Boston – was struck by the city’s perfect execution, Midwestern hospitality, and eminently walkable downtown. “It was the most urban Super Bowl ever,” said Gahl, “and many of our guests never needed to take a cab. They could walk from their hotels to every major Super Bowl attraction, restaurants and the game itself. We had observers from upcoming host venues, New York and New Orleans, and other interested cities, and they were saying ‘what’s in the water here?’ because everyone is so friendly and everything went so smoothly.” My cab driver to the airport added, “The city really pulled out all the stops to make downtown accessible and the center of the action. They did a great job.”
By halftime locals were talking about when, not if, the NFL would return to Indy with another Super Bowl, and based on the city’s stellar performance and its track record with other athletic organizations, I’d guess sooner rather than later.
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The site of this year's Super Bowl was within walking distance of many hotels and all of downtown Indy.
Sunday’s Super Bowl was the most watched television event in American history, tuned into by nearly half of all households and at peak time, more than 117,000,000 viewers. Ad rates were $3.5 million per 30 second spot, and while viewers debated who was better, an overweight Volkswagen obsessed dog or Clint Eastwood, the real beneficiary of all that airtime and all those viewers was the city of Indianapolis.
“Ten years from now, I think we will look back on this one single day as the tipping point in tourism and perception for the city,” said Chris Gahl, Vice President of Marketing for the Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association.
Several years ago when the city decided to go for the 2011 Game (it ended up with 2012), the bid process required $25 million in non-taxpayer funds, and several big Indy area companies, including Eli Lilly and Cummins, stepped up and provided it in the form of donations. Last weekend paid off that investment handsomely on both sides of Gahl’s equation: Conventions and Visitors.
Leisure travelers were treated to a week of eye opening coverage of the city’s unsung charms on major networks, minor networks, radio and the internet. Establishing shots featured some of the city’s most iconic attractions, including the world’s largest children’s museum, the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the country’s second largest collection of urban monuments after Washington, DC. Sports talk radio hosts on New York’s ultra-popular WFAN seemed to spend as much time discussing how shocked they were by the high quality of their meals (especially at the city’s beloved St. Elmo’s steak house, where Eli Manning fueled up for his Super Bowl victory) as the teams involved. This scenario was repeated all over the country as visiting media, many of them new to the city, were won over.
“We’ve always been a favorite of the sports media because of our many huge events, and some sports reporters come several times a year,” said Gahl. “But to see how surprised and how impressed the mainstream press was with our arts, culture, dining, and hospitality, that’s a real feather in our cap.” I personally was not surprised, since I have had the pleasure of visiting Indy a few times, and last year included it on my list of the nation’s best cities for weekend tourism visits.
The Super Bowl is just the latest in a series of accomplishments for a city that decided to actively tie its fortunes to sports about two decades ago, helping to pioneer the then revolutionary concept of downtown stadiums. As a result, a city that had already hosted the world’s largest one day sporting event, the Indianapolis 500 (over 300,000 spectators), for over a century, added the Pan Am Games, another huge auto race (NASCAR’s Brickyard 400), has hosted the annual NFL combine for 20 years, held golf’s Senior PGA Championship last year, has held the PGA Championship and has the BMW Championship this year, and perhaps most importantly of all, became the only city with a contract to be the recurring host for “March Madness.” The NCAA holds basketball’s Final Four here, for both the Men’s and Women’s tournaments, alternating every two years. Many of these facilities also have public components: you can ride in Indy cars driven by actual Indy 500 race drivers at the track; tour the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum; run on the famed oval as part of the nation’s largest half marathon; visit the NCAA Hall of Champions; take an hour-long tour of Lucas Oil Stadium, the Super Bowl venue, including the field, locker rooms and press box; and much more. The city is also home to NFL and NBA teams, numerous US Olympic Teams including USA Diving, USA Gymnastics and USA Track and Field, which frequently host major championships in these disciplines, as well as the headquarters of the NCAA and thus virtually all college sports. It is the most sports centric city in the nation, if not the world. But as viewers all over the country found out last week, there is a lot more to Indy than sports.
A Super Bowl first, Indy erected a massive "4-lane" zip line ride through the heart of downtown, which proved extremely popular.
While the media exposure surrounding the big game and word of mouth from the 150,000 visitors should help Indy attract more tourists, the city may win even bigger on the convention side, thanks in part to all the experience and infrastructure it has hosting huge, complex events. “About 65% of the ticket holders for this year’s Super Bowl were corporate decision makers,” said Gahl. “And I think our message to them is very clear – if we can host the world’s largest single-day sporting event for over a century, the Final Four regularly, and the Super Bowl –we can handle your convention.”
To make that point, it was a priority Indy get it right, and not end up like the Athens Olympics, perceived as dysfunctional. In this regards, they hit a home run. The entire downtown was cordoned off and turned into a weeklong “fan zone,” complete with the interactive NFL Village and NFL Experience, free concerts, autograph sessions, celebrity sightings, food and beer kiosks, and countless parties, bars, eateries and ad hoc novelties, from the makeshift Bud Light Hotel to the Huddle temporary nightclub. Rolling Stone Magazine and Bacardi threw a party the night before the big game with concerts by four major recording artists, and not to be outdone, Maxim Magazine partnered with Patron Tequila to throw a star studded bash the same night, while Playboy’s famed Super Bowl pre-party was Friday night – all three soirees commanded four figure admission fees. A 4-lane zip line ran over the heart of downtown, and every single spot sold out, although it was open the entire week. Streets were staffed with a sea of uniformed volunteers to answer questions and direct visitors, the city put on 4-hour classes for anyone who might interact with guests to preach “Hoosier Hospitality,” and everything from the jet ways at the airport (a $1.1 billion state of the art facility just over 3 years old) to billboards to free maps was festooned with the game logo and welcomed guests very visibly to the Super Bowl City. When volunteers repeatedly punctuated their advice with “Have a Super Day!” they actually sounded like they meant it.
As a result, everyone I spoke to – even disgruntled Patriots fans on the flight back to Boston – was struck by the city’s perfect execution, Midwestern hospitality, and eminently walkable downtown. “It was the most urban Super Bowl ever,” said Gahl, “and many of our guests never needed to take a cab. They could walk from their hotels to every major Super Bowl attraction, restaurants and the game itself. We had observers from upcoming host venues, New York and New Orleans, and other interested cities, and they were saying ‘what’s in the water here?’ because everyone is so friendly and everything went so smoothly.” My cab driver to the airport added, “The city really pulled out all the stops to make downtown accessible and the center of the action. They did a great job.”
By halftime locals were talking about when, not if, the NFL would return to Indy with another Super Bowl, and based on the city’s stellar performance and its track record with other athletic organizations, I’d guess sooner rather than later.
Indy knows how to put these sort of events on. We know what the out of towners like. Of course Indy will get another super bowl, it is one of the few safe cities that hosts the event. Everything was in walking distance and we know how to spot crime early on. In addition, the rappers do not like indy so you know that is a good thing.
Indy has hosted many final fours, 2002 Fiba world basketball championship , is home to the NCAA headquarters, an ATP tennis event, Indy 500, Brickard 400, the Pan American Games, and was the city in which Elvis gave his last live performance. Also, I beleive at 1 time or may still be, but had the largest crowd to host the high school state championship game when Damon Baily was in high school.
Indy has hosted many final fours, 2002 Fiba world basketball championship , is home to the NCAA headquarters, an ATP tennis event, Indy 500, Brickard 400, the Pan American Games, and was the city in which Elvis gave his last live performance. Also, I beleive at 1 time or may still be, but had the largest crowd to host the high school state championship game when Damon Baily was in high school.
That may be the only issue. I am not familiar with all of the hotel space but Indy built a brand new high rise marriot just for the super bowl. The hotel the Giants stayed out was on the low end too, not one of the best by a longshot.
But I say it will get another one, even if it was cold during super bowl, there were heat lamps everywhere.
They keep getting final 4's and they will be in the "once a decade" super bowl rotation.
Have a feeling people will hate it next year in New York. High crime, cold, and not real people.
But I say it will get another one, even if it was cold during super bowl, there were heat lamps everywhere.
They keep getting final 4's and they will be in the "once a decade" super bowl rotation.
Have a feeling people will hate it next year in New York. High crime, cold, and not real people.
