NEW ORLEANS — With more than 65,000 football fanatics packed into the Caesars Superdome for Super Bowl LIX and countless others at the myriad events spread throughout the Crescent City before, during and after the Big Game, keeping people safe was a major challenge–and organizers met the challenge successfully.
Nola Protection, which had a small contingent at the game itself, was primarily charged with protecting more than 30 of the big events hosted by major companies and celebrities across New Orleans, says founder Frank Quinn.
Nola Protection deployed about a dozen open gates for the Super Bowl LIX Opening Night event, which attracted about 10,000 media members to ask players from the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles questions ahead of the game on just about any topic they wanted.
Super-Sized Security Challenge
Throughout the week, Nola Protection staff was at the Super Bowl Fan Fest at the New Orleans Convention Center and at events hosted by brands including Uber, Spotify, Amazon Crown Royal, Smirnoff, ESPNBet, NBC News, Playboy and Maxim as well as Athletes First and longtime agent Leigh Steinberg.
At all of those events, only one suspicious package was found, says Quinn. That was largely thanks to the LiveView Technologies (LVT) mobile security units that were set up at the perimeter of the events, says Quinn.
“During the Super Bowl, every vacant parking lot turns into a party,” he says. “It gives the promoters that are hosting these events a great overwatch because they are bringing a ton of equipment and product and merchandise onto these sites that weren’t really built for hosting events.”
“All these different events really came together in the last 30 days,” says Quinn. “We made changes up until the day of the game, so it took a small army of people.”
“One thing that I did not anticipate was the amount of executive protection that we would need,” says Quinn. “We always knew that we would need it but it seems like with every large-scale event, the executive protection pieces come together at the last minute, because the people that are generally hiring those, their schedules are a lot more fluid.”
What’s Next After Super Bowl LIX Success
Their work wasn’t done when the game was over either.
“Probably about halftime, our phone started ringing for after-parties for some of the (Eagles) players,” who had a seemingly insurmountable lead when Kendrick Lamar took the stage inside the Caesars Superdome.
With Super Bowl LIX only about a month after the New Year’s Day terrorist attacks on Bourbon Street and with Trump and even music megastar Taylor Swift in attendance, security at the Superdome “was always going to be much more robust than a traditional Saints game,” says Quinn.
“One of the larger, more public things you saw was all the road closures that were all over downtown that made it even more difficult for us to get our guards to post,” he says.
“For all the events across town, I think every single one of them wanted to reevaluate their security plan after the terrorist attack and many of them added additional components or additional guards,” says Quinn. “Fortunately, we didn’t have a single customer that canceled.”
Nola Protection saw “almost no pushback” from fans about their security setups, says Quinn.
“Part of that is due to the fact that it’s become commonplace at higher-profile events,” he says. “You couple that with the fact that a lot of these events have shifted from the old Garrett walkthroughs to the new open gates, including the NFL.
“It’s just so much more seamless because people aren’t taking out their phones, their keys and putting everything on a table. They’re just walking through and it’s scanning them with all their belongings on their person. They go through it so fast that they don’t have a chance to push back.”
The National Guard, Homeland Security and New Orleans Police Department were deployed to protect the city after the Eagles’ lopsided victory. Quinn takes pride in protecting the city where his company is based.
“It was a great experience for all of my team,” he says. “It’s really rewarding to see everything come together, to see different people step up in leadership roles that may not traditionally have those leadership roles because you have so much more business than you normally would.
“We always knew it was going to be big. I just didn’t know it was going to be this consuming. I felt like we get a chance to breathe for the last two weeks. I was just in awe at some of the production quality of some of these different events that came in. Everybody had national-level talent all over town. It was great to be able to experience that, and I’m glad to play a small part in it. It definitely gives you a sense of pride to see your city shown in such a positive light,” says Quinn.
While it’s likely to be several years before the Super Bowl returns to the Crescent City, New Orleans is no stranger to big sports events, including the NBA All-Star Game, NCAA Final Four, college football national championship game and more.
The city is also prepping for Mardi Gras, with Nola Protection being deployed to about 25 events, says Quinn.
