The Super Bowl is one of the most high-profile events on Earth, and 2025 host city New Orleans is a destination tailor-made for the spotlight, adding its signature brand of revelry, culture and cuisine to an undertaking that has become the quintessential U.S. cultural statement to the world.
The Crescent City will have hosted the iconic event a record-tying 11 times following this year’s match, stretching back to 1970 when the Kansas City Chiefs bested the Minnesota Vikings at Tulane University.
"Hosting the Super Bowl for a record-tying 11th time underscores the confidence major event planners have in New Orleans' ability to execute complex, large-scale events. These events require technical excellence, strong leadership and extensive experience," said Stephanie Turner, senior vice president of convention sales and strategies for New Orleans & Company. "The New Orleans hospitality and business community consistently rise to meet the opportunity demonstrating why New Orleans is Built to Host."
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The Big Easy is such a big-event magnet—thus its tagline, “Built to Host”—that it was originally going to host the 2024 Super Bowl, but since the game collided with the largest event on its annual calendar, Mardi Gras, it was forced to punt until 2025.
That’s some serious megaevent cred.
I ventured to New Orleans for a fam trip to see how the city is gearing up for the epic spectacle, and also sample some of its world-renowned cuisine and the major new meetings and events infrastructure that will continue to fuel this iconic destination’s prodigious MICE offering long after the final whistle blows on Super Bowl LIX.
Why New Orleans Is a Perennial Super Bowl City
With the 2025 edition of the big game, New Orleans will tie Miami as an 11-time Super Bowl host. And while Miami certainly offers South Florida fun, sun, glitz and glamour, New Orleans stands alone because of its unique culture, cuisine and music scene as the Birthplace of Jazz. And conveniently, all of these world-class draws are but a walk away for most visitors.
[Related: New Orleans Is an Authentic Destination Guaranteed to Make Meetings Memorable]
“We’re a very, very compact city,” said Walt J. Leger III, president and CEO of DMO New Orleans & Company. “Not only do we have a compact downtown where you’ve got 26,000 hotel rooms within a two-mile triangle between the Superdome, the convention center and the French Quarter, but you’re really only 15 or 20 minutes away from any part of the city of New Orleans at any given time.
“When you’re here for an event, you know that you’re here for that event,” he emphasized. “It is a city that allows the whole city to become engulfed in that event, and there’s no escaping it. We enjoy being able to be a part of it in an intimate way and in a way that connects with people.”
Caesars New Orleans Hotel & Casino
Our fam headquarters hotel, Caesars New Orleans Hotel & Casino, set the stage for what was to unfold.
Formerly Harrah’s New Orleans Casino, a complete $435 million renovation has not only transformed the hotel—it still had that “new carpet smell” when we visited—but also the Canal Street area around it.
“We’re spending north of $400 million turning Harrah’s New Orleans into Caesars New Orleans, said Samir Mowad, general manager of the property. “We have literally renovated every square inch of the former Harrah’s New Orleans and the existing casino, and then we’ve added a lot to it. It’s a three-and-a-half-year labor of love by our construction team and our operations team to bring all that to fruition.”
At the time of our visit, the 340-room hotel tower had the first 10 of its 26 floors open, with the rest scheduled to be wrapped well in advance of the February 9 Super Bowl.
Meetings groups can also press the Harrah’s tower across the street into service, for a total of nearly 800 rooms and more than 35,000 square feet of meeting space available.
The Caesars property offers a 150,000-square-foot casino that rivals Las Vegas’ offerings as well as a 5,700-square-foot Caesars Sportsbook that’s a particular point of pride. The new tower also includes the two-floor, 54-room Nobu Hotel Caesars New Orleans.
Restaurants include Louisiana’s first Nobu; Emeril’s Brasserie; a celebrity-driven food hall featuring options by Bobby Flay, Buddy Valastro and Nina Compton; and the 13,500-square-foot Octavia bar and lounge that connects the hotel tower and casino.
A Game-Changing Convention Center Upgrade
Of prime importance to the meetings and events industry—and the linchpin of the city’s MICE efforts—is the more than $500 million overhaul of New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
“It’s the engine that makes everything work here,” said Michael J. Sawaya, president and CEO of the convention center.
It’s hard to understate the magnitude of the five-year, $557 million renovation project, which is approximately 50% complete, according to convention center Chief Operating Officer Adam Straight.
Sawaya said the convention center has signed a letter of intent with Omni Hotels and Resorts to invest approximately $500 million in a 1,000-room headquarters hotel across the street on land purchased from the owner of The Sugar Mill event center, which would be demolished.
The result will be the River District mixed-use project, bringing a variety of new lures to the convention district.
"The River District will include 900 mixed-income housing units, with 450 designated as affordable and workplace housing," Turner said. "This reimagined area is expected to enhance the experience for meetings and events planners by creating new opportunities for hosting events and activities, while expanding into another dynamic district within New Orleans’ already vibrant landscape."
So far, completed parts of the convention center renovation project include the following:
- A $65 million transportation hub and 7.5-acre pedestrian park with outdoor entertainment areas and centralized access for buses, shuttles, taxis and ride-shares
- Modernized public spaces and meeting rooms with advanced technology
- An aesthetic redesign, plus technology, sound and audiovisual upgrades
- Installation of four new chillers, two cooling towers, six boilers and a state-of-the-art system-monitoring station
- Neighborhood-themed charging stations
- New low-flow bathroom fixtures, LED lighting, water bottle refill stations and the ability to recycle, compost and host waste-free events
Phase two of the project, already underway, includes renovations to 140 meeting rooms and lobbies and prefunction space—timed to not disrupt events—new LED lighting and other technology upgrades, and new mechanical systems such as HVAC and a $50 million, 40-acre “cool roof.”
The convention center offers 1.1 million square feet of exhibit space on one level and under one roof, making it the sixth-largest convention center in the U.S. and the largest single exhibit space in the country, according to the convention center.
The convention center takes particular pride in its LEED Platinum certification, which is extremely rare for an existing building, making it the largest convention center in the world to have that designation under the new LEED standards.
[Related: How New Orleans Celebrates Sustainably, From Culture to Coastline]
Caesars Superdome
An instantly iconic sports stadium when it launched in 1975, the Superdome immediately overshadowed its domed competitors due to a variety of factors, including being the first to feature a video display system and the first to offer luxury box suites at the mid-tier level. But the most impressive feature was its size.
“It’s 2 million square feet of space under roof,” said Doug Thornton, executive vice president, stadium, arena and theater division for ASM global, which manages the venue. “Most of the modern-day stadiums today are in the 1.8 to 2 million-square-foot range. The Astrodome, when it was first built, which was prior to the Superdome, was a million square feet. The RCA Dome in Indianapolis was a million square feet. The Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, was a million square feet.”
The sheer heft of its footprint and massive interior—it is 270 feet taller than any other U.S. stadium, according to Thornton—has allowed the home of the NFL New Orleans Saints to enter its second half-century riding a more than $550 million renovation tailwind that was completed in time for the 2024 NFL season.
Began in 2020 and conducted during four off-seasons, the stadium’s latest large-scale renovation project—stadiums of its era were typically bonded for a 30-year lifespan—included upgrades such as new atriums, two 40-yard-long bars, enhanced accessibility features, new escalators and elevators, and overhauled entrances, concourses and kitchens.
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Perhaps the most impressive part of the project was the removal of its two large ramp sections, allowing for more social areas such as the bars—a New Orleans no-brainer if ever there was one—within the stadium.
“We like to refer to the Superdome as the living room of New Orleans,” Thornton said. “And the reason we say that is because it’s like a big communal gathering—a family gathering. This building has become part of the social fabric of New Orleans, not to mention the impact it has in terms of the economics.”
The renovation has resulted in yet another jewel in the Crescent City’s tourism crown.
“There are three big demand generators in our community,” Thornton said. “One is the French Quarter—the reason people come to New Orleans and have been coming here for 300 years. The second is the convention center—the Convention District—which is about a mile away. And the third is this building.
“That golden triangle, those three demand generators, are within a short walk of each other, and there’s 27,000 hotel rooms in between,” he added. “That’s what makes us so unique as a destination city when it comes to sports and entertainment, and why we’ve hosted 11 Super Bowls, and why we’ve hosted multiple Final Fours and WrestleMania.”
[Related: How to Plan a Meeting Around One of New Orleans’ Top Festivals]
Top New Orleans Food Experiences
New Orleans is not a destination you take your diet to, that’s for sure.
As Turner so aptly put it: “I think we like to think of ourselves as the Super Bowl of food.”
Although I was managing some success with my latest diet, that all changed once I stepped off the plane at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. By that time, however, the bargaining with myself was complete and certain indulgent expectations were set. As always, New Orleans didn’t disappoint.
For me, a visit to New Orleans isn’t complete without slurping down an iced platter full of oysters, whether in one of my “secret” locals-only locales or at tried-and-true favorites such as Felix’s Restaurant & Oyster Bar in the French Quarter, where my free time was spent at the counter elbow-to-elbow with fellow bivalve buffs.
Meals that were part of the official fam agenda, convivial affairs enjoyed in the company of my fellow meetings trade journalists as well as NFL writers from the U.S., U.K., Mexico and even Australia, showcased traditional as well as trending restaurants and cuisine.
Dinner on arrival night was at Tableau, part of the ubiquitous Brennan family presence and located off Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter. Housed in a historic three-story townhouse, this French-Creole restaurant provides that authentic French Quarter dining experience in an elegant atmosphere with professional, personalized service.
On the contemporary global side, a truly standout dinner found the group on trendy Magazine Street—the antidote to the nonstop revelry of Bourbon Street—to visit Dakar NOLA, offering modern Senegalese fare in an unhurried environment. Helmed by three-time James Beard Award nominee Serigne Mbaye, Dakar NOLA was originally launched in 2020 as a pop-up, shut down during the pandemic and then made a heroic return as a brick-and-mortar establishment in 2022, garnering numerous awards and recognitions from major cuisine publications and websites since.
Moshe sophisticated presentation and outstanding quality of service and cuisine resulted in the restaurant winning the coveted 2024 James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant and should be considered a must-experience night out for smaller gatherings that want to delve even deeper into the local cuisine scene.
Also on the cutting-edge, international side, the group spent the second night onsite at Caesars New Orleans Hotel & Casino to indulge at Nobu, a bucket-list experience from restaurant legend Nobu Matsuhisa that many claim rivals its sister restaurant in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. This is globally influenced, “New-Style Japanese” communal dining at its most epic and luxurious.
Two more-traditional F&B outings included breakfast at Chapter IV Restaurant, located a short walk from Caesars Superdome, where shrimp and grits fit the must-have Southern breakfast bill, and the final-night dinner at Palace Cafe, one of those old-school Dickie Brennan restaurants that epitomize the New Orleans dining scene. If you crave the flames of bananas foster prepared tableside, this Canal Street favorite is the place for you.
New Orleans Offsite Options
Interesting offsite venues visited on the fam included Vue Orleans, which at 34 stories boasts panoramic views of the city as well as an interactive ground-floor museum detailing the history and culture of the city.
A great opportunity to get groups out of the legendary hustle and bustle of New Orleans proper is massive New Orleans City Park—at 1,300 acres nearly twice the size of NYC’s Central Park.
The sprawling expanse offers meeting and event options both in the park as well as in the New Orleans Museum of Art and New Orleans Botanical Garden, where our group was regaled with stories of Creole culture from Our Sacred Stories’ Denise Augustine while enjoying an al fresco lunch prepared in the venue’s outdoor “Kitchen in the Garden.”
