Skift Take

Mayor Bloomberg has been pushing NYC tourism hard since the start of his reign, and now as he goes out he wants to leave with a bang; with Superbowl 2014 in the city's backyard and the economic impact that it will have on the region.

Broadway in Manhattan will be turned into the site of a Super Bowl-themed free party next year when the National Football League’s championship game is held at MetLife Stadium across the Hudson River in East Rutherford, New Jersey, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The street will become “Super Bowl Boulevard” from 44th to 33rd streets as the center of the New York’s events leading to the Feb. 2 title game, the mayor said in a City Hall news conference attended by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, New York Giants co-owners John Mara and Jonathan Tisch, and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson.

“This city depends on tourism, it depends on people having good feelings about New York, to come here to get an education, medical care, to start a business, to work, to entertain themselves and expand their minds, and the Super Bowl is another one,” Bloomberg said. “We know how to handle big events and this one will go off as a textbook example of what you should do.”

The media center, where about 5,000 credentialed reporters will work, will be at the Sheraton in Times Square. Media day, where each player and coach on the competing teams is available to be interviewed, will be held at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, that state’s governor, Chris Christie, said today.

“The Super Bowl is not just a game anymore,” Goodell said. “It’s a week of events.”

The mayor, whose economic development strategy for the city has included an 11-year marketing campaign to boost tourism to a record high totaling an estimated 52 million visitors in 2012, has said he expects to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact from the event, including free advertising that the most-watched televised sports event may bring.

Decade effect

The greatest economic impact, the mayor said today, is spread over the 10 years after the game, as people show up as tourists inspired by having seen the city on television.

The NFL events on Broadway will be open the Wednesday through Saturday before the game. The Vince Lombardi Trophy, which goes to the winning team, will be on display there. The league will hold football clinics and nightly concerts, as well as player appearances and availabilities for autographs, according to a press release.

From 1970 to 2001, the Super Bowl actually brought an average of $92 million of income gain to its host city, according to a study co-authored by Victor Matheson, currently an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Jersey Guys

The teams will stay in New Jersey hotels and practice in the state, with the National Football Conference representative using the Giants’ headquarters near the stadium in East Rutherford. The American Football Conference team will use the Jets’ headquarters in Florham Park.

This year’s title game is Feb. 3 in New Orleans. Next year’s will be the first held in a cold-weather city in an open- air stadium.

“Outdoors in the Northeast, that’s never been done before,” Johnson said, as temperatures outside hovered near 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 4 Celsius) with winds gusting at around 35 miles per hour (56 kph). “It will be challenging and a lot of fun. We have to welcome this weather and we will.”

The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

Editors: Michael Sillup, Larry Siddons. To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Goldman in New York City Hall at [email protected]; To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jay Beberman at [email protected]. 

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Tags: events, nyc, sports, super bowl

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