Super Bowl XLVII won’t be played in New Orleans until 2013, but Baton Rouge tourism officials are already looking at opportunities to get some business from the game. “We’re putting on our thinking caps,” says Paul Arrigo, president and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We’re looking at opportunities for mass transit from here and marketing gambling, casinos and golf. We’re only an hour and 10 minutes away from New Orleans.”
The last time the Super Bowl was in New Orleans in 2002, Baton Rouge did some advertising and filled some hotel rooms. But Arrigo doesn’t know the exact amount of business Baton Rouge saw from the game. “We weren’t as sophisticated back then,” he says. The best chance for Baton Rouge to get Super Bowl business will come from average pro football fans who win lottery tickets for the game, or from the 200,000 people who are headed over to be part of the event. Arrigo says if one of the Super Bowl teams is from the west, like the Dallas Cowboys or the Houston Texans, that could boost the amount of Baton Rouge business. But he says the strongest competition for the Super Bowl spillover will come from Biloxi, Miss., which will attract football fans with its array of casinos.—Timothy Boone
