It was the blackout seen around the world. As the lights went down in the Mercedes Benz-Superdome for 34 minutes during the third quarter of Super Bowl 2013, many believed this would harm New Orleans' chances at getting another Super Bowl to the city. In the moment of the blackout, many wondered if the city was truly prepared to handle an event of this size. However, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell states that the blackout will not impact the city's bid at hosting another Super Bowl in the future.
"I fully expect that we will be back here for Super Bowls. And I hope we will be back. We want to be back," said Goodell on Monday morning.
Goodell believes that going forward, the blackout will help them prepare for instances of this happening again in the future. According to the commissioner, the NFL had a backup plan in place if the blackout had continued on for an extended period of time. There was a backup system in the Superdome that was ready to be rebooted but was unnecassary when the lights were restored. The initial outage was blamed on an unspecified "abnormality" in the Superdome's power system. The power company Entergy stated that once the abnormal issue was detected, the sensing equipment operated as designed and opened a breaker, causing power to be partially cut to the Superdome in order to isolate the issue.
The blackout caused a social media uproar with fans tweeting updates on the situation and possible theories of what causes the outage. Goodell does not believe this had any impact on the fan's experience during the Super Bowl weekend or enjoyment of the game.
"We knew they have an interest in future Super Bowls and we look forward to evaluating that. Going forward, I don't think this will have any impact at all on what I think will be remembered for one of the greatest Super Bowl weeks," said Goodell,
Super Bowl XLVII was the first Super Bowl in New Orleans since 2002. It was the cities chance to show off how it has rebuilt itself after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city.
