Fans fill MetLife Stadium for Super Bowl XLVIII. (Photo by Ariele Goldman Hecht/MetLife Stadium)
“We dodged more than a bullet — we dodged a bullet train,” said National Football League’s Sr. VP of Events Frank Supovitz about the weather surrounding the 48th Super Bowl, held Feb. 2 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. Supovitz spoke via video feed at the Stadium Managers Association Seminar in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Feb. 2-6. Snow needed to be cleared three times during construction at the stadium leading up to the event. Though snow fell in the days before and after the event, game time temperature for the Super Bowl was 49 degrees Fahrenheit.
Though media reports hinted at the possibility of changing the game date due to weather, Supovitz said that the rumors were blown out of proportion. The NFL always has a plan in place should the game need to be moved for any reason.
“Our job was to kick off the ball at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 2 come hell or high water, but we had to have a plan in place in case hell or high water came,” Supovitz said. “We would never want to move Super Bowl to another day, ever.”
“There are a million reasons not to move it — probably more than a million reasons not to move it,” he added. Luckily, the weather cooperated and the event played out as scheduled.
Super Bowl Boulevard on Broadway in New York drew more than 1.5 million visitors over four days. There were 52 community projects including bowling and planting trees, and concerts were held in Montclair, N. J., and the five boroughs.
The game was the most-watched Super Bowl of all time, with 112.2 million viewers, and the halftime show had more viewers than the game itself, with 113.5 million.
The challenge of coordinating activities was assisted by Lua Technologies, used by the NY/NJ Super Bowl XLVIII Host Committee for about six months prior to the event, as well as the day of the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl Host Committee chose to use Lua because “we needed real time communication,” said NY/NJ Super Bowl Host Committee Project Coordinator-Marketing Will Tisch.
Lua works across a variety of devices. (Photo by Lua Technologies)
About 60 employees from the Host Committee used Lua, as well as LeadDog Marketing and First Protocol, both of which worked with the committee.
Lua provides a single tool to communicate with everyone from a company, breaking up employees into different departments and allowing options such as messaging directly or as a group, as well as calling individually or setting up a conference call with an entire department.
“During events, especially during Super Bowl, basically no one is in the office,” said Tisch. “When we’re not in front of the computer is where Lua is extremely effective.”
Lua shows who has opened and read each message, and also has an option where the reader must click to confirm that they’ve received information.
“The accountability it provides is necessary for us because a lot of our executives have very high standards and need to know that things have been received and understood,” he added.
There is also the ability to upload files, which are available to either everyone on the platform, or to only certain users. Lua works on IOS and Android, as well as desktop computers, and can work with WiFi, but also with 3g and 4g networks.
Eli Bronner, partner, client development with Lua Technologies, said that the Super Bowl Committee sent tens of thousands of messages through Lua. Not all of the messages ended up being strictly Super Bowl-related.
“Once we got Lua, most of us would just use it to communicate with each other, be it business or leisure, because it’s just so convenient,” said Tisch, who added that the Committee also appreciated Lua’s commitment to security.
“That was important to us when we were considering using Lua because we have lots of information, whether it’s ours or the NFL’s, that is confidential and can’t be published,” Tisch said. All connections to Lua use 256-bit SSL encryption and data is continuously backed up.
Normal costs to use Lua range from $5-$8 per user, per month.
“For one-off events we’ve been known to do custom pricing, but usually will secure a longer deal with the stakeholder behind that event,” said Bronner.
Interviewed for this story: Eli Bronner, (914) 552-0466; Frank Supovitz, (212) 450-2000; Will Tisch, (201) 205-2144