For Marcus Brown, there is no better city for the Super Bowl than New Orleans

For Marcus Brown, there may be one thing more appetizing in New Orleans than a dozen chargrilled oysters from Drago’s. So much so that Brown is already thinking about the city hosting its 12th Super Bowl — the eleventh is taking place Sunday. Brown, the executive vice president and general counsel of the energy behemoth Entergy, is this year’s Super Bowl Host Committee Chairman.

“We really want to have an opportunity to have a 12th Super Bowl in New Orleans. Our people have been working [hard] on this. We want to execute,” Brown said in a phone call during Super Bowl week. “We want everybody to have a great time, but we’ll measure this to some degree as to whether or not we’ve done it well enough to get the opportunity to do it again. That’s what we really want.”

What’s working in Brown’s favor — and he knows this quite well — is not many cities in the world throw a party better than New Orleans. As the city prepares to host Super Bowl LIX, and the countless parties, brunches and gatherings of all sizes, Brown spoke with Andscape about The Big Easy’s role in putting on the biggest event in American culture.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I imagine the process to land a Super Bowl has to be quite intricate. How does it come about?

It typically is a competitive bidding process. And so you’ve got NFL cities because you have to have an NFL team to bid for the Super Bowl. You’ve got to have a great stadium. You’ve got to have the infrastructure for all the Super Bowl events. You’ve got to have all the tents and the venues, and you’ve got to have all the things that it takes to put on a great party. This is like the world’s largest Super Bowl party at your house. The advantage that we have in New Orleans is the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation, which really serves as the administrative arm of the host committee.

Think of the host committee as the liaison between the city, the state, and the Saints. We sit in the middle of all of that and coordinate things to make sure that all that planning is done well and is coordinated amongst the different groups, and it goes off without a hitch. It’s a collaborative process, and the host committee sits in the middle of that collaboration to make sure that there’s a good flow of information, ideas and planning between those four groups.

When the Super Bowl was last in New Orleans in 2013, you were a ticket holder, and now you’re responsible for throwing the world’s biggest Super Bowl party. When you look back on it, how surreal is it to you?

I appreciate that characterization, but I work with a lot of really, really talented people. I mentioned the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation because that really is the administrative arm of the work that we do as the host committee. Jay Cicero leads that group. But what I would say is that as a ticket holder, as a fan, you’re largely concerned about the game itself.

Fast-forward to 2025, well, two things happened. One is our company, Entergy Corporation, is the founding partner. And so you can’t bid for a Super Bowl, you can’t have a Super Bowl if you don’t have corporate support in the city where the game will be played. We stepped up early and I work a lot with the Saints because we are one of their major sponsors, and our teams coordinate with them a lot. This game comes along, and we’re the only Fortune 500 company in New Orleans. We’re one of only two in the state of Louisiana. So we’re natural partners on something this big that can drive the kind of economic development it can for this state and this region.

So, it made sense business-wise and personal interest-wise. We talked about it within the company, and we thought that I was probably best positioned to represent the company in this effort. That’s how it happened, and that’s how I went from fan to whatever you want to characterize it as what I’m doing now.

What’s it been like planning such a momentous event while understanding that New Orleans recently experienced a terror attack on Bourbon Street?

That’s a great question, man. We think a lot about that. We first start with obviously great sympathy and respect for the people who lost their lives or lost somebody in connection with [the attack] or were injured. So there’s a tremendous amount of thought that goes into how do you honor those people. But the other part of that is that an act of terrorism is intended to make people afraid, and people who are afraid change the way they live.

We think it’s important we celebrate the Super Bowl as we appropriately acknowledge the losses associated with the city. But the Super Bowl is part of our culture. It’s the largest game in American sports and one of the largest sporting events in the world. We can’t let one individual stop us from engaging in something that has been important to us for so long. And so we think about how we do it, but we know that we should do it.

Both things are important: respect and honor in how you do it, but it’s important that we have the game and continue to live our lives the way we all should be allowed to.

What does the economic impact of having the Super Bowl do for a city like New Orleans?

It was just in [Las] Vegas. There were a lot of different numbers thrown around in Vegas, whether they crossed a billion dollars or more. If you look back at 2013, the economic impact for the city and the region was in excess of $450 million, and the game has grown tremendously since then. And just think about the kind of city New Orleans is. Tourism is a big provider of economic prosperity for our region.

And tourism isn’t a one-event thing. 6,000 credentialed media professionals will be in New Orleans for anywhere from seven to 10 days. And they’re going to be all over this region telling stories, telling stories about people, food, the culture, telling stories about business development, all the things that are associated with our region that we want to get out there. What happens when that occurs is that it’s like watching the Paris Olympics. You saw Paris in a way you hadn’t seen in a long time. If you had been there before, you wanted to go back.

With the benefits of an event like this, with the scale and the coverage it gets, New Orleans will be reaping the benefits of this for a very long time, even beyond the immediate, measurable economic impact we can put our hands around. A month after the Super Bowl, we’ll be able to give you a number, but conventions will be coming. Other major sporting events will come because this is a showcase of the Super Bowl. There’s also a showcase that New Orleans has and can continue to put on major events. And if you’re thinking about having [a major event] anywhere in the world, this is a great place to do it. That’s the benefit that we think will be the ancillary benefit that keeps giving well beyond the initial economic impact.

There’s Kendrick Lamar’s highly anticipated halftime show. There are two Black quarterbacks in the Super Bowl. And then there’s the potential of the Kansas City Chiefs doing something that’s never happened in NFL history by winning three straight Super Bowls. We’re going to see history in one way or another. New Orleans has hosted the Super Bowl several times already. You’re a busy man right now, but when you get a moment to sit down, how often do you think just how special this weekend will be?

The halftime show is something that the NFL keeps very close to itself. So, the host committee does not get to weigh in on that. And frankly, with all the Kendrick Lamar/Lil Wayne controversy in New Orleans, I’m glad we don’t have a hand in that. But in a world where there’s a lot of tension and confusion, a unifying game like this, where we get to celebrate just the majesty of the elite nature of NFL championships, the diversity of the game and all of the value that brings to the league. Then, in terms of the fans, everybody gets to see how it works when everybody plays a part in this.

It’s all one showcase — the biggest game in the world — and it speaks to what the NFL is trying to create. We just have to be a part of it. We think we have a city built to host this kind of game. We’ve done it. We take great pride in being able to do it. And particularly when there are some historic components, it makes it an especially unique opportunity for us to shine.