With two quarters in the books, the heavily favored St. Louis Rams, then known as the “Greatest Show on Turf” with Kurt Warner under center, trailed the New England Patriots 14–3. Leading the Patriots were second-year head coach Bill Belichick and a 24-year-old first-year starting quarterback named Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr.
As the lights dimmed to start the halftime show, the TV broadcast cut to U2 lead singer Bono, making his way through a crowd gathered on the field, singing the opening lines of “Beautiful Day,” the lead single on the band’s 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. As the song reached the first chorus, Bono climbed onto the heart-shaped stage, joining bandmates Adam Clayton on bass, Larry Mullen Jr. on drums, and The Edge playing a Gibson Explorer electric guitar.
Unlike many recent Super Bowl halftime shows, U2 performed two entire songs with no special appearances, no medley of hits, no drone constellation, no pyrotechnics, and no riding on an animatronic tiger (See Katy Perry, Super Bowl XLIX). After cheers for “Beautiful Day,” the band launched into “Where The Streets Have No Name,” a classic from The Joshua Tree album.
At the start of “Where the Streets,” the words “September 11, 2001” appeared on a screen behind the stage, then names slowly began ascending toward the ceiling of the Superdome. Throughout the song, the names of the 2,977 people who died as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which took place less than five months prior, scrolled across the screen. Passengers and crew aboard American Airlines flights 11 and 77, those aboard United Airlines flights 93 and 175, members of the New York Police Department and the Fire Department of New York, people at the Pentagon, and of course, those who were at the World Trade Center.
With The Edge playing the intro to “Where The Streets Have No Name,” Bono could be heard reciting Psalm 51:15, “Oh Lord, open my lips, so I might show forth thy praise.”
Then, at the very end of the song, Bono pulled open his jacket to reveal an American flag sewn into the lining. The crowd erupted in cheers at the moment of cathartic unity.
“We play ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ whenever we need God to walk through the room,” Bono later said of the Super Bowl performance.
The second half of the game was a nail biter, with the Rams tying the score at 17 all with just 1:30 left in the fourth quarter. Brady then led the Patriots offense into field-goal range, and Adam Vinatieri kicked a game-winning 48-yard field goal as time expired.
The game is considered one of the best Super Bowls ever and was voted the 20th best game in NFL history. In hindsight, the game also served as a launching point for a Patriots dynasty that would go on to win six Super Bowls (out of nine appearances) during the Belichick-Brady era. Brady won a seventh title with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV.
“Those names on the screen in the Superdome — it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it,” said Jay Cicero, president and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation.
Cicero has worked for the GNO Sports Foundation since 1990, the same year New Orleans hosted Super Bowl XXIV. Since Cicero joined the Sports Foundation, the city has hosted three Super Bowls (1997, 2002, and 2013), with a fourth set for February 9, 2025. The GNO Sports Foundation, founded in 1988 to attract and manage sporting events in the New Orleans area, has led the host committee for the Super Bowls in 1997, 2002, 2013 and now for the 2025 game. The NFL did not require host committees when New Orleans hosted the Super Bowl in 1990 or in prior years.
Cicero said there were a lot of things behind the scenes that made the 2002 Super Bowl both special and a challenge.
“After 9/11, the NFL canceled the next weekend of regular season games,” Cicero said. “To make up for that regular season game, they also pushed the postseason dates back.”
Moving the date of the Super Bowl from the originally scheduled January 27 to February 3, though, meant the game would conflict with the first of two big Mardi Gras weekends in New Orleans. With the huge crowds, parties, road closures, public safety deployment, and cleanup associated with Carnival parades, New Orleans logistically is unable to bid on or host Super Bowls when Mardi Gras falls in early February.
“From September 11 to mid-October, we worked feverishly with the NFL to move everything that was planned for the end of January to the first weekend of February 2002,” Cicero said. “Of course, that was the first Super Bowl that had significant security surrounding the Superdome, which is pretty much standard today.”
Working with the city of New Orleans, the Sports Foundation reached an agreement with Carnival krewes that traditionally parade on the first weekend of Mardi Gras (Carnival organizations in New Orleans are called “krewes”). Those krewes agreed to move their parades up a week, essentially swapping places with the Super Bowl.
“We worked hand-in-hand with the mayor’s office and the city council to do a lot of things to make that happen, to keep the Super Bowl, and of course, the NFL worked feverishly to move everything that had been planned to a week later,” Cicero said. “It was a challenge, but everyone worked together and came through, and it really put our stamp on the Super Bowl at that time. We were fortunate enough to get it back again in 2013, and here we are again 12 years later, which is too long. Twelve years is too long between Super Bowls for New Orleans.”
Cicero can say that with some authority because of New Orleans’ history of hosting the Super Bowl. The 2025 game will be the 11th for New Orleans, which will pull the city even with Miami for the most Super Bowls in a single city.
New Orleans hosted its first big game in 1970, with Super Bowl IV played on January 11, 1970, at Tulane Stadium.
Super Bowls VI and IX were also held at Tulane Stadium. Ironically, those last two Super Bowls at Tulane Stadium still hold the record as the two coldest NFL championship games.
The Louisiana Superdome (now marketed as Caesars Superdome) opened in August 1975 and hosted its first Super Bowl on January 15, 1978, thus bringing New Orleans’ Super Bowl total in the 1970s to four.
“Back then, the Super Bowl kind of rotated in between Miami, New Orleans, and Los Angeles,” Cicero said.
The 2025 Super Bowl will be the record eighth held in the Superdome, two more than Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.
The enduring success of the Superdome is remarkable, especially considering the fact that the 50-year-old stadium is competing against new facilities like Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, for high-profile sporting events.
Cicero said he always makes a point to visit other stadiums that host the Super Bowl. He said he knows he’s a “homer,” but to him there’s no place like the Superdome.
“You combine the history, that it was conceived 60 years ago and opened 50 years ago,” he said. “It really is amazing that our forefathers put this facility together in such an iconic style. It only cost $160 million, which was a lot of money back then, but it’s nothing compared to the multi-billion-dollar facilities that are out there now. When you really think about it, it’s quite remarkable.”
Renewing An Icon
Of course there has been quite a bit of reinvestment into the Superdome over the past 50 years. Most notable, in many ways, were the renovations after Hurricane Katrina. The city of New Orleans infamously used the Superdome as a shelter of last resort ahead of the storm that made landfall on August 29, 2005. Pictures from the following day of the roof of the Superdome shredded by the hurricane’s winds and sunlight beaming down on the field, littered with makeshift beds, are unmistakable images from that dark chapter in the city’s history.
Between Hurricane Katrina and the following football season, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the state of Louisiana, the NFL, and the Louisiana Stadium & Exposition District, which manages the Superdome and the adjacent arena, collectively put up $185 million to repair and update the stadium.
The Superdome reopened on September 25, 2006, in time for the New Orleans Saints’ first home game that season. The Goo Goo Dolls performed outside the Superdome before the game, and U2 and Green Day performed on the field ahead of kickoff. In U2 and Green Day’s rendition of the Skids’ song titled “The Saints are Coming,” Bono added a Katrina-inspired interlude:
Living like birds in the magnolia trees
A child on a rooftop, mother on her knees
Her sign reads ‘Please, I am an American’
President George W. Bush, then in his second term in office, performed the coin toss.
The game came just over a year after Bush delivered a speech from Jackson Square, at the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter, at a time when the city — and much of the region — remained without power and virtually unrecognizable.
During the game, the Saints defeated the Atlanta Falcons, known locally as the “Dirty Birds,” 23-3. The first score of the game came after Saints safety Steve Gleason blocked a punt, with cornerback Curtis DeLoatch recovering the football in the end zone for a touchdown. The play is now memorialized in a bronze statue outside of the Superdome.
The stadium received another series of upgrades in the early 2010s, including a new gold aluminum exoskeleton, new screens at either end zone, a reconfiguration of lower-level seating, upgraded suites, and enhanced lower-level concourses.
Following those upgrades, the city hosted Super Bowl XLVII on February 3, 2013, which pitted the Baltimore Ravens against the San Francisco 49ers. The game was the first to feature brothers coaching against one another, earning it the nickname “Bro Bowl.” The Jim Harbaugh-coached Ravens defeated the John Harbaugh-coached 49ers 34-31. In the third quarter, an off-site power relay failed, leading to a partial power outage in the Superdome and a 34-minute game delay. The game was jokingly called the “Blackout Bowl.” A postgame investigation found that the relay was owned by Entergy, New Orleans’ power utility, and the outage had nothing to do with the Superdome’s electrical system.
With the 2013 Super Bowl years in the past and the Superdome increasingly left behind by the newer stadiums, Saints ownership and the state of Louisiana announced in late 2019 a massive $560 million renovation plan that would essentially transform the interior of the Superdome into a brand new stadium. Tops on the to-do list that time around was removing two corkscrew ramps on either end of the stadium, thus creating bright, towering atriums, each with express escalators to transport fans to all levels. Removing the ramps also paved the way for larger concourses and vastly expanded food and beverage service.
The recent mega renovation project, while warranted, also followed the recent trend of NFL owners awarding Super Bowls to cities with new stadiums. New Orleans previously submitted failing bids for the Super Bowl in 2014 (for the 2018 game) and in 2016 (for the 2019 game). Those games ultimately were awarded to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Atlanta, respectively, which both had brand-new stadiums under construction.
“Certainly the over half-billion dollar renovation of the Caesars Superdome was important in attracting not only the Super Bowl but other major events,” Cicero said. “Keeping the facilities that we have, especially Caesars Superdome, competitive with some of the other renovated or new facilities around the country is an important factor in attracting these events.”
While Superdome renovations have definitely come at a cost over the years, the state, team, and local leaders nonetheless can count on a return from the Super Bowl. The 2013 Super Bowl had a $480 million economic impact for the region, according to a study by the University of New Orleans.
“People do ask, ‘What do you think it’s going to be in 2025?’” Cicero said. “I don’t know, but it’s definitely going to be higher 12 years later than it was in 2013.”
Cicero said what’s remarkable is the fact that, while next year marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Superdome, other cities have built not only replacement stadiums but replacements for the replacements.
“Facilities come and go in other cities,” he said. “Built, torn down, rebuilt, or gone to another section of the state — or even sometimes across state lines to build a new facility. But the Superdome is so iconic and is part of the fabric of our city and our state. It is something we’re all very proud of. Continuing to renovate the facility to keep up, to make it more modern, and to be able to have that history is something that New Orleans really leans into.”
Concurrent with the Superdome renovations were a string of infrastructure improvements around downtown New Orleans. Cicero said those infrastructure projects underscore the other strength of New Orleans for hosting big events: walkability. Whereas many other stadiums are located in a suburb or otherwise far removed from a city’s cultural center, the Caesars Superdome is within walking distance of tens of thousands of hotel rooms, New Orleans’ convention center, and the French Quarter.
Collectively, all those things add up to the Super Bowl Host Committee’s theme,“It’s what we do,” and New Orleans’ broader marketing slogan, “Built to host.” That doesn’t just apply to the Super Bowl. There’s also the NCAA Final Four, the annual Sugar Bowl, the college football playoff and championship games, festivals, and conventions. And, of course, Mardi Gras each year.
Speaking of Mardi Gras, in 2018 when New Orleans made its pitch for another Super Bowl, the city was actually awarded the 2024 game. Cicero and the bid team, though, knew in 2018 that another collective bargaining agreement between NFL owners and players was on the horizon and, along with it, the potential of adding a 17th game to the NFL’s regular season. An additional regular season game, much like the week delay in 2001 following September 11, would push the Super Bowl back a week.
Players approved a new collective bargaining agreement in 2020, and owners voted to expand the regular season to 17 games in March 2021. The expansion meant the 2024 Super Bowl would now fall on the second weekend of Mardi Gras, with the krewes of Okeanos, Mid-City, Thoth, and Bacchus all parading on Super Bowl Sunday in Uptown New Orleans.
Anticipating all that in 2018, the bid team actually included in its contract for the 2024 game the possibility of moving that game to another city in exchange for giving New Orleans the next available Super Bowl. As it turned out, the 2024 Super Bowl went to Las Vegas, and New Orleans got the 2025 game.
“So in 2020, during the pandemic, we spent several months moving the Super Bowl from 2024 to 2025,” Cicero said. “That’s something that people don’t realize. Only experience and relationships allow you to do that. I mean, what other city would have thought to put that in their [bid] documents?”
Cicero said his team at the GNO Sports Foundation will, no doubt, take a week or two to catch their breath after the Super Bowl. But they won’t have too much time. The big Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans start rolling February 27 and continue through March 4.
More Than A Game
There’s a lot more to hosting a Super Bowl than just playing the actual game. Ahead of Super Bowl 2025, the host committee and the NFL held an opening night event in the Superdome, the Super Bowl Experience at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the Super Bowl Soulful Celebration (essentially a gospel concert) at the Mahalia Jackson Theater of Performing Arts, the NFL Honors awards ceremony at the Saenger Theatre, the Louisiana Culture Festival at the French Market, and for the first time ever, a Super Bowl Host Committee Parade, featuring Mardi Gras-style floats winding their way through the French Quarter.
But there’s more. A less publicized aspect of the Super Bowl, and many other big events held around the country each year, are outreach efforts aimed at combating human trafficking. Jennifer Best, CEO of Eden Centers for Hope and Healing, said there’s always a surge of human trafficking in the city ahead of not just the Super Bowl, but most every large event.
“Usually when there’s an uptick of people coming into the city, there is an uptick for trafficking,” she said. “Sometimes people say, ‘Oh, it only happens during the Super Bowl.’ No, and I want to make it very clear, it happens all the time. There’s just an uptick during Mardi Gras, the Super Bowl, and other big events that come into the city.”
Whenever that happens, local, state, and federal agencies step up anti-trafficking efforts in the city, and Eden Centers — a New Orleans-based nonprofit organization that works to eradicate human trafficking through emergency and residential shelter, youth outreach, education and legislative advocacy, and recovery and reentry services for victims — partners in that effort to provide emergency housing.
“We have one bedroom per guest,” Best said. “It’s not like some shelters that have bunk beds all across the room. We have one bed to a room, and we provide therapies and case management. They come in. They’re able to have a safe bed, and we will help them get to their next spot.
“We’re here 24 hours a day, 365 days out of the year,” she added. “This isn’t just a one-time, Super Bowl event. We are in trafficking recovery all year round.”
The U.S. Department of Justice defines human trafficking as “a crime involving the exploitation of a person for labor, services, or commercial sex.” Best said that anyone can get drawn into human trafficking, certain demographic groups are more at risk. People from racial and sexual minorities, from poverty or foster care, with previous exposure to trauma or abuse, addiction, mental health issues, or physical or developmental disabilities, and young people are all at risk for being targeted by human traffickers.
“Most of the time, traffickers pose as a boyfriend, or it could be a family member, and they just sweep in and try to meet all of their needs,” Best said. “Then, eventually it turns on them, and they have to start earning their keep, if you will.”
In 2023 alone, there were 1,743 victims of human trafficking served in Louisiana. The majority of those — 83 percent, or 1,451 — were 17 years old or younger. In Orleans Parish alone, there were 220 cases.
“Cases can contain many, many victims,” Best said.
One common misconception for people coming out of human trafficking, Best said, is the trajectory of recovery. Just as people with a history of substance abuse can experience relapses, so too can victims of human trafficking.
“We have decided in the 13 years we’ve been doing this that it’s important for us to offer a lifetime community of care,” Best said. “That means that, when they decide to go back to their trafficker, we’re still going to be here when they decide to get out again. For some it just takes a lot longer, and we give them the space for that. We hope they’ll stick around and not have a relapse, but there are a lot of barriers they have to overcome in order to be self sufficient, and that just can’t happen overnight.”
Best said that while Eden Centers is not a Christian or faith-based organization, she believes the center’s approach to serving individuals involved in human trafficking reflects the type of forgiveness modeled in the gospel.
“I think of Christ and how he offers, time and time again, forgiveness and redemption,” she said. “That’s kind of what we do.”
Another center that offers emergency shelter for women in the New Orleans area is Friendship House, owned and operated by New Orleans Baptist Ministries.
“Friendship House is the only place in the city that does stays for women with children,” said James Welch, president of New Orleans Baptist Ministries, the compassion ministry arm of Baptists in the region.
Welch said New Orleans Baptists planned to join other groups ahead of the Super Bowl for a human trafficking awareness campaign led by a national organization called In Our Backyard.
For the past 15 years, In Our Backyard has held anti-trafficking events in conjunction with the Super Bowl. Leading up to the 2024 Super Bowl in Las Vegas, In Our Backyard, partner organizations, volunteers, and law enforcement worked with more than 200 convenience and corner stores to train workers on how to recognize and report human trafficking. In addition, volunteers distributed 10,000 missing children booklets and placed 2,500 “freedom stickers” in public restroom stalls.
Through the “Team Up In Our Backyard” effort in Las Vegas, volunteers, partner organizations, and law enforcement officers identified 623 suspected human trafficking contacts, which collectively produced 95 verified leads. What’s more, of the 36 children reported missing in connection to human trafficking ahead of Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported 16 were recovered within a week of the game.
Like Best, In Our Backyard’s founder and president Nita Belles has been careful to say that the Super Bowl does not cause human trafficking.
“Super Bowl doesn’t increase sex trafficking,” Belles has said. “Sex buyers increase sex trafficking.”
