Indy Super Bowl bid: the little engine that could

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Among Super Bowl host cities, Indianapolis might be considered the little engine that could.

It lacks the glamour of Miami, the corporate presence of Dallas and New York-New Jersey, Arizona's desert warmth and New Orleans' allure. Indy clearly faced an uphill battle to win the 2012 Super Bowl pitting the New England Patriots against the New York Giants Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium

But Indy accomplished something no other city bidding for the game had, thanks largely to a community of corporate citizens with a long history of rallying together for the city's benefit: It raised the $25 million needed to host the game in advance — all from private money.

Fred Glass, who led the city's effort to win the 2011 game, said being able to show 32 NFL owners a portfolio of letters promising all of the money "showed the owners we were serious."

"We weren't going to raise it — we had raised it," said Glass, now the athletics director at Indiana University.

Indy narrowly lost the 2011 game to Dallas, but at the urging of the league, the city returned the following year with another Super Bowl bid and renewed pledges of the $25 million. This time it prevailed.

Raising the money in advance was critical for a small market that some NFL owners might have been skeptical of, said Mark Ganis, president of Chicago-based sports business consultant SportsCorp Ltd.

"It's a great accomplishment, without which I doubt that Indianapolis would have gotten the Super Bowl," Ganis said.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy declined to comment on the city's winning strategy, but Frank Supovitz, the NFL's senior vice president of events, told the Indianapolis Business Journal that the city's model of lining up the money first was a good one because it allowed the host committee to focus on operations instead of fundraising.

But he said Indianapolis has a unique public-private partnership and he doesn't expect its fundraising be a model other host cities adopt.

That partnership let Indianapolis do something else unusual in host cities: promise sponsors nothing in return.

Dallas last year raised about $30 million from its considerably heftier corporate community, but not in advance. Thirteen donors of $1 million each received in return game tickets, suite and parking passes and invitation to galas, said Tony Fay, vice president of communications for the North Texas Super Bowl Host Committee.

Susan Williams, president of the Indiana Sports Corp., said there was nothing to promise the more than 100 sponsors who stepped up for Indy's game, including drug giant Eli Lilly & Co. and engine maker Cummins Inc. in nearby Columbus, Ind.. Indianapolis didn't know until more than a year after it won the game what it would be able to reward its sponsors with, she said.

"What was tangible were not the tickets or the suites. What's tangible are the people that are out in the streets, and the people that are in the hotels, and the people that are jamming the restaurants," Williams said, marveling at how the city has transformed itself for the Super Bowl. "You stand back and look at this thing and go, 'Wow, we're the bomb."

Cathy Langham, an Indianapolis freight management executive who helped recruit the corporate donors, said the host committee has since been able to deliver some tickets and post the names of donors on a website, but that was not what motivated them to give.

The bigger vision of a game benefiting the entire city, not just individuals, appealed to many donors.

"We saw Indianapolis' hosting of a Super Bowl to be a wonderful way to showcase our city," said Marni Lemons, a spokeswoman for Firestone Building Products and Industrial Products.

Indianapolis taxpayers won't be completely off the hook for the game's cost. The Capital Improvement Board that Glass formerly led has committed to spending $8 million for security, emergency response and other city service that will not be entirely offset by the additional tax revenues the game is expected to generate.

But Langham thinks success will breed more success and predicts the NFL will invite Indianapolis to shoot for another Super Bowl in a few years

"I'm very biased. I think the NFL will beg us to bid on another one because they're going to be so delighted with how this one turns out," Langham said. "Certainly, I think we can do it again."