I’ll be honest here and say that after the Big 10 Championship Football game on December 3rd, I thought the city of Indianapolis was in trouble. I didn’t think they would be prepared for an event with such a magnitude of the Super Bowl, and I thought the city was just too small for what we were getting ourselves into.
I’ll admit not only was I dead wrong, I was so far off it wasn’t even funny.
Kudos to every single member of the Super Bowl committee, every volunteer and every person behind the scenes that made this happen. Not only did these folks plan a great event, they knocked it out of the park.
I thought Indianapolis would need to have a flawless event and hit a walk-off home run to even be in the conversation to get another Super Bowl, but from what it sounds like from the national media, Indianapolis will surely get another Super Bowl in the near future.
I have never been to a Super Bowl, so I can’t say that I’m an expert on how things should be, but it just looks like everyone here knows what they’re doing and it’s working out wonderfully.
That’s a result from great leadership from the committee and everyone involved.
From what other members of the media are saying, Indianapolis is setting the bar for cold weather cities to host the Super Bowl. That says a lot, as Indianapolis will surely bid for a future game.
One big thing that’s wowing visitors to downtown Indianapolis is how much stuff is going on. There are free concerts going on literally every night leading up to the big game, there are tons of parties going on downtown and a bunch of tents set up for fans to party in. There’s even a firework/light show that goes on every night around 9:30. I was skeptical on the city being over crowded with how things went for the Big 10 Championship game, but when I went to partake in the events this past weekend, I was wowed.
Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely packed—but everything was set up so nicely that it wasn’t a problem at all. It was actually pleasant to be around so many NFL fans.
The NFL Experience set a Super Bowl-city record, with 100,536 people entering the gates from Friday-Sunday for an experience of fun events in the Convention Center near Lucas Oil Stadium.
The crowds at the NFL Experience for the weekend surpassed the total amount of people that went to the experience in Dallas last year for the Super Bowl. That’s remarkable.
The city of Indianapolis estimated over 200,000 people visited downtown last weekend, and they expect way more this coming week as we get closer to the big game.
This city has gone above and beyond with this planning, and I think everyone involved here is impressive.
With local people thinking the city is too small and the traffic being hectic, the visitors from out of town love it. I’ve heard media members say they would have to travel as much as 30-45 minutes to get to where they need to be for stories/press conferences in other cities, but here in Indianapolis it literally takes 5-7 minutes.
Everything is walking distance away from where you need to be, and that’s a huge perk for a small city. It’s not chaotic like it could be in other cities.
Another big factor as to why the Super Bowl events are succeeding here is the weather. Many people were scared of coming here due to Indianapolis being a cold weather city, and our reputation of snow and ice at this time of the year. Heck, even Dallas was pretty much shut down last year due to snow and ice, so people thought Indy would be worse.
Mother Nature has been so kind to the city that we’ve had near-record temperatures this past week as temps were in the upper-50s and 60s early in the week, and it’s not supposed to get much colder as we get closer to Sunday. It’s so warm, in fact, that people wanted the roof open on the stadium for the media day on Tuesday.
I think Indianapolis has put themselves above Detroit, Houston, Dallas and Jacksonville (the last few first-time Super Bowl hosts) as far as a host goes, and can see the NFL coming back real soon. In fact, it’s going so well I could honestly see Indy getting in a cycle with New Orleans, Tampa and Miami for the big game.
The NFL wants a presence in the northern part of the U.S., but other than Ford Field in Detroit and Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, there are not many other stadiums or cities that are equipped to host the big game.
Indianapolis is on a cycle to have men’s and women’s Final Fours played here, and it hosts the men’s and women’s Big 10 Basketball tournaments, the Big 10 football Championship Game and 113 big races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway—I’d say with the success of this week, the big game is coming back.
The city is very well prepared, the stadium is one of the nicest in the NFL and the hospitality is great. I haven’t seen figures yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the economic impact this game will have on the city and the NFL will be huge.
If you’re reading this and haven’t been to any of the events, I’d definitely go. All of those scares from parking issues, traffic and over-crowding have been proved wrong. You’re missing out, because this city has put on a heck of a showing.
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