Super Size Me
Event Firms Reveal Ins and Outs of Scoring Super Bowl Business
by Paulanne Pellegrino | Published in February 2007 Event Currents
When the Super Bowl comes to town, it can mean a landslide victory for local event planners and small businesses in the industry. The NFL has traditionally been quite serious about providing opportunities to these companies, and its main vehicle for doing so is the Emerging Business Program (EBP), which promotes and facilitates economic opportunity for Minority/Women Owned Businesses (MWOB) through contracts with the NFL, NFL contractors and affiliates, the Host Committee and local hotels, venues and event producers.
While not all interested MWOB will receive contracts, the NFL does mean for them to learn what it takes to participate in an event of this magnitude. Toward this end, it offers a series of vendor workshops, and a Business Resource Guide listing all qualified MWOB is compiled and distributed to procurement entities involved with the Super Bowl.
The Matchmaking portion of the EBP then works to match qualified MWOB with hiring and contracting entities, make referrals and assist participating MWOB in responding to and completing RFPs, scheduling appointments and creating joint ventures and other partnerships.
Sharyn Outtrim, of PrimeSport and RazorGator Interactive Group, who specializes in the construction of corporate hospitality villages for high-profile sporting events, says she relies on that yearly list to hire the help she needs. Furthermore, companies that really impress her may well be asked to join their “traveling circus,” as Outtrim calls it, and assist with events around the country.
What the NFL Wants
Although competition for Super Bowl contracts is stiff, certain qualities will get you in the door.
Quality of product tops the list, NFL Business Development Specialist Kim Fields told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Besides that, it pays to know your customer — the NFL always responds well to companies that are familiar with its methods, practices and standards. A good reputation and established credibility within your community and industry are also key, she said.
Additionally, after the contract has been signed, a marked commitment to what was agreed upon is mandatory if one expects a repeat invite. Finally, price gougers be warned! “Just because we’re the NFL doesn’t mean we’re going to spend $35 a pound for ribs,” Fields told the newspaper.
From the Super Bowl to the Oscars
Even if you don’t get involved with the programs offered through the NFL and the Host Committee, you can still plug in to Super Bowl revenue.
Valerie Bihet, who has worked in corporate event planning for 15 years with Euro Disney and Club Med, recently launched Valbihcom, which focuses on marketing and destination management. For Super Bowl XLI, her first “big game,” she decided to focus on private clients.
“It’s very challenging for a young company to be involved with Host Committee events,” she says. “I didn’t use my time trying to go after those types of events, but instead I have been networking with private citizens who are interested in booking trips to Miami to enjoy the long weekend with friends.”
For Francine Powers, the Super Bowl helped her take her business, We’re Having A Party Inc., to the next level. In 1994, the event planning and production company was one of three companies chosen out of 20 by Ambrosia Productions to work on ABC Network’s pre-game Super Bowl party in South Florida. At the time, Powers will still running her business from home. While thrilled to have made the cut, she remembers thinking, “Oh my god, I work out of my house!”
By the time preparations were underway, Powers had moved her business into an industrial location and was ready for the challenge. In the end, her efforts resulted in such a smashing success that her clients invited her to work with them again, this time in Los Angeles on the Academy Awards Governors Ball.
Frustration in Miami
But not everyone gets those results. Gladys Mezrahi of Indigo Events Corporation, a Miami event planning and production company, ended up without any contracts this year. Her lack of participation was not due to a lack of effort, however. Upon her initial attempt to bid on contracts, says Mezrahi, the Host Committee told her they were not in the market for planners who would have to outsource any elements of the jobs.
“The bids that I got, I could do. I have a lighting connection through my company,
but I was told I couldn’t use them,” she says. When a contract did come up, she adds, it
did so only a few days before the bidding date and left her without enough time to organize a cohesive proposal.
Maria Elles Scott, associate director of communications for the Host Committee, says there’s an explanation: for reasons of cost-efficiency, her organization avoids bids that include a middleman fee. “Ideally our goal is to give business to the people who can actually provide the service themselves,” she says.
If you’re looking to get involved in future Super Bowls, feel out the local Host Committee’s priorities. “Every host committee has a lot of leeway in how they choose to do the Emerging Business Program,” she says.
Furthermore, explains Scott, short turnarounds are just the nature of the business, although she estimates that only about 30 percent of the bids must be turned around in as few as 48 hours.
The Real Dividends
Even for businesses that do get contracts, it’s not necessarily the winning lottery ticket some may expect. The EBP is “meant to [target] organizations locally who otherwise might never have the opportunity to get business with the NFL, even if that only gives them the idea of what it maybe takes to compete on a higher level,” says Scott.
Darryl Holsendolph, president and CEO of Holsen Inc., agrees. “You’re not going to get rich with the Super Bowl, but if you can participate and deliver goods and services at this level, you can do it for anything,” he says. His business took off after the special event merchandising company’s first Super Bowl, leading to five more Super Bowls and involvement with the Olympics, the Grand Prix of Miami and other high-profile events.
“It has had tremendous impact on the growth of our company,” says Holsendolph.
Marla Robbins of The Brownie Lady, who is participating in the EBP for the first time this year, expects participation in the NFL’s Tailgate event to yield business. “I think in the future it will, once the people that are attending the event are exposed to my product,” she says.
For David Tournek of Touch Catering, however, participating in the Super Bowl is just another day on the job. “It’ll look good on the resume,” he says, although he doesn’t expect any contracts to fall in his lap because of it. “I look at it as just a job we got hired for and we do a great job on it and we go on to the next one.” (The company is not in the EBP, but as of press time was not able to discuss its work on Super Bowl-related projects, as contracts were still under negotiation.)
Despite the bumps along the road, Powers still rejoices in the recognition that the 1995 Super Bowl party brought her, which she has parlayed into over 12 years of successful growth that continues into and past 2007’s game.
It’s a trajectory that many event companies may be just beginning this February.