National Football League - Super Bowl

NFL Unveils Super Bowl XXXIX Host Committee Logo

Jacksonville will truly be a Super City on February 6, 2005 when it hosts Super Bowl XXXIX. The NFL’s championship game will conclude the 2004 season with a unique "Super Bowl on the River," featuring the largest land and water football tailgate party ever conceived.

The area near ALLTEL Stadium will be transformed into Super Bowl Landing, a hub of activities and festivities where, for one week, 100,000 people will find parties, events and lodging within a compact and convenient two-mile area that can be easily walked. The most unique feature of Jacksonville’s Super Bowl will be cruise ships that serve as floating hotels on the St. Johns River near downtown and ALLTEL Stadium. The cruise ships will provide 7,600 rooms for NFL guests and out-of-town fans.

The NFL’s showpiece game was awarded to Jacksonville on November 1, 2000, when NFL owners voted Jacksonville to host the game over Miami and Oakland, which were also vying for the game. The Super Bowl is always coveted by community leaders as a badge of membership in the top tier of American cities, and it promises a local economic impact of $300 million, as the city houses, feeds and hosts parties for as many as 100,000 game-week fans. The game will be televised worldwide, exposing Jacksonville to an audience of nearly one billion people in more than 200 countries. Thus, when Jacksonville was awarded Super Bowl XXXIX, the city took another step toward becoming a major-league player on the national scene.

Awarding the Super Bowl to Jacksonville helped spur a $40 million renovation of ALLTEL Stadium. And the total of 82,000 seats in the stadium for Super Bowl XXXIX gives ALLTEL the biggest capacity of any stadium in the current rotation of Super Bowl cities.

Key players to the vote were Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver; Mike Weinstein, then the city’s director of economic development who is now running for mayor; Peter Rummell, Chairman and CEO of the St. Joe Co.; Jaguars partner and insurance magnate Tom Petway; and Mayor John Delaney.

Only 10 cities have ever hosted the Super Bowl, and Jacksonville’s Super Bowl host committee hopes that a successful game will secure a spot for Jacksonville in the NFL’s rotation of cities that host the Super Bowl. As Wayne Weaver told his fellow owners on November 1, 2000 when Jacksonville was awarded the game: "We’re going to make you very proud of your vote."

This article was taken from www.jaguars.com.  All rights reserved.