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Super Bowl's effects on city go beyond sports world

Bowl success, civic improvements could help the city in the long term

By Portia-Elaine Gant
Senior Staff Writer

Houston is no stranger to bad press. Over the years, respected publications including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal printed a multitude of negative articles about the city, and they only increased in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl.

With the spotlight on a city marred by sprawl and business disasters, it seemed sure the biggest game in football would solidify the nation's belief that Houston is no more than an overweight city full of skyscrapers and construction.

But according to marketing expert Betsy Gelb of the Bauer College of Business, Houston's beauty prevailed over the bad publicity.

"I think that people who actually came to the city were pleasantly surprised, and more pleasantly surprised than if we hadn't gotten bad publicity," Gelb said. "People who actually come to the city and experience it are usually surprised that it's green. They think it's going to be desert."

Although Gelb said she expects a change in perception from those who visited Houston, she said there probably won't be a change among the estimated 89.6 million Americans who watched the game on television.

"Anyone who has watched a football game realizes that people don't think, ‘Wow, what a neat city that was.' There's a real difference between the effect on people who come and the effect on people who are watching it on television," Gelb said.

Despite positive post-game press, Houstonians are left to wonder whether the city will continue the civic improvements it undertook in the past few months, including rebuilding streets, planting trees downtown and along freeways and cleaning up tons of trash and discarded tires. Some observers have suggested that there won't be further efforts to improve the city.

"I think that's an unfair characterization," Gelb said. "That implies that no one has planted a tree in this town until the Super Bowl was coming, and that's not true."

Economics professor Barton Smith, the director for the Institute for Regional Forecasting, said that whether or not beautification efforts continue, the bowl's effects still will be relevant.

"Many of the capital improvements will last and hopefully benefit the city. One of the secondary benefits of an event like this is it forces a timetable on the city to do things that it should have done anyway, like spruce up its central business area or improve the aesthetics of the highways," Smith said. "Those types of things that involve a capital investment can have a more lasting effect."

Smith cited Salt Lake City, the host of the 2002 Winter Olympics, as an example. The city had grown over the years without any significant improvements to its transit system, but leaders promised to improve highways and install a rail system during negotiations for the Olympics, Smith said.

"That's an improvement that will continue to benefit Salt Lake City after we've all forgotten that the Winter Olympics were held there," he said.

As far as monetary impact on Houston, estimated to be as high as $350 million, Smith said it wasn't a huge boon for the city but should not be overlooked.

"The demand-side impact is not trivial, but it's not huge. Some people say Houston is going to prosper in 2004 because of the Super Bowl, but that's just not correct," Smith said. "To say that it made no significant impact is an exaggeration of the other side."

Smith had a different take on the city's image. While normally the effects of marketing and a successful event are fleeting, baseball's All-Star Game ­ coming to Minute Maid Park in July ­ could be an exception.

"The advantage that Houston has ... is that like any good advertising campaign, when one good ad follows another, then it tends to be a greatly accumulative effect," Smith said. "In Houston's case, the Super Bowl is going to be followed six months later by the baseball All-Star Game. That's a nice coincidence."

The successful planning leading up to the Super Bowl will have effects beyond the sporting world, Smith said.

"There has been a general feeling that Houston was a city that couldn't accommodate big conventions and big events. One of the positive things that Super Bowl week did for Houston was demonstrate Houston's capabilities of doing just that," Smith said. "That impact is an important impact and one that will probably last a long time."

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