The Kansas City Chiefs are pushing to make history at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, with a chance to secure the first-ever Super Bowl three-peat on Sunday, Feb. 9. Global pop star Taylor Swift, who is dating Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce, already set records there three months ago.
Swift’s sold-out Eras Tour concert series—which drew more than 191,000 fans over three shows in New Orleans Oct. 25-27, 2024, a record daily average of about 64,000—served as an important marker for organizers ahead of the 2025 Super Bowl, given the Superdome’s history. When the venue hosted the Super Bowl in 2013, the stadium infamously endured a power outage that disrupted gameplay between the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens for 34 minutes.
During Swift’s trio of shows, NFL officials, along with local and federal agencies, monitored traffic and security, and they performed tabletop exercises. Additionally, they reassessed the stadium’s chillers and power generators. Swift’s concerts were powered by about 14 megawatts of electricity at their peak during the three-day stint, which is roughly the same input that’s anticipated for this year’s Super Bowl.
The 2013 incident embarrassed New Orleans, which wanted to show off how well the city had bounced back by hosting the big game for the first time since Hurricane Katrina. Now, one of the most memorable electrical blunders in sports history is merely a hiccup in a highly contested game that ultimately crowned the Baltimore Ravens champs.
“At the time, it was a lot more than a hiccup,” former NFL senior vice president of events Frank Supovitz said in a phone interview. “It’s now a blip in NFL history. It wasn’t particularly course-changing for anyone [at the league], but there’s more focus on making sure it doesn’t happen again. Because it did happen.”
Then-New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu called the partial blackout an “unfortunate moment.” It left fans watching at home without football and little clue what was happening. Ravens and 49ers players were also confused and frustrated as officials scrambled to find answers in a tense moment.
It was later determined through investigation that the blackout ultimately happened because a switchgear’s relay device trip setting was set too low to handle the incoming electrical load.
Manufactured by Chicago-based S&C Electric Co., the relay device was programmed to be triggered if it detected an overload in consumption beyond a specific threshold, which happened after Beyoncé’s halftime show. The device, designed to avoid a larger outage, went off a quarter mile away from stadium at a substation where energy company Entergy Corp. drives power to the facility.
Entergy, which still works with S&C and other manufacturers, installed the equipment that has since been decommissioned and taken out of service. There is no consensus 12 years later about who receives the blame for not operating the equipment at proper settings and the overall lack of communication leading up to the incident. The sudden collaboration to solve the issue swiftly, though, is what some involved will remember most.
“I was really proud of the NFL people, because nobody got in each other’s face,” former NFL executive vice president of business operations Eric Grubman said in a phone interview.
The Superdome now uses LED lights in place of the metal halide lights that added to the overall outage delay time in 2013. While the power was restored less than 10 minutes, the former lighting system needed additional time to warm up. “If there’s anything that helped the LED industry in stadiums, it was Super Bowl 47,” Supovitz said. “Nobody wanted to see that happen again.”
There has been a greater sensitivity on power deliberation and a potential outage since then, starting with Super Bowl 48 the following year at MetLife Stadium. The league installed four back-up generators for that game (one for each of four quadrants of the stadium) and conducted a capacity test in the Meadowlands several months before the game.
In August 2024, ahead of the three-day string of Swift shows in New Orleans, the NFL and other officials conducted a full mains test, which is a full inspection of the stadium’s electrical system while simulating the load of electricity needed for the game. The procedure has been part of the league’s protocol since the 2013 outage.
In the last decade, the Superdome has hosted a slew of major events, including the 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship, Sugar Bowls, the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four, WWE events and Monster Jams. The multipurpose venue has restored faith that it can handle the power supply needed for big-time events.
The Superdome recently underwent a $550 million renovation that took four years to finish. It included stadium officials partnering with Entergy to install upgrades to the facility’s electrical system ahead of the Super Bowl.
“We’re confident that these substantial upgrades to the stadium’s infrastructure will ensure a seamless experience for the big game,” NFL director of events operations Steve Farago said in an emailed statement.
Entergy executive vice president and general counsel Marcus Brown said his team has spent the last nine months focusing on specifically power delivery readiness in and outside of the stadium. The combination of stadium renovations, infrastructure upgrades and dogged preparation from multiple entities involved is why he believes that nobody should be worried about a blackout repeat.
“The type of incident that happened back in 2013, there’s a lot of reasons why that couldn’t happen again,” Brown, who is also the chair of the New Orleans Super Bowl LIX Host Committee, said in a phone interview.
New Orleans is tied with Miami for hosting the most Super Bowls with 11 in total since the inaugural one in 1967. The competition has gotten stiffer to host the big game with newer stadiums coming on board in recent years. It remains unclear the next time it will return to New Orleans, with the next few years locked up already in Santa Clara (2026), Los Angeles (2027) and Atlanta (2028). Entergy is viewing this year’s game as an audition to do No. 12.
“We want the NFL, the fans and everyone to feel like we need to come back New Orleans,” Brown added. “And how this game goes off is part of that.”
