Guest Post: What Does a Super Bowl Parade Cost?

Dr. Misty Blessley, Associate Professor of Statistics, Operations, and Data Science at Temple U., shares her sports preferences with us today.

Next week, the winners of Super Bowl LVII will be honored by their hometown fans in a Super Bowl Parade. This Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs will face off against the Philadelphia Eagles. Everyone loves a victory parade, but how does a city plan for a parade that might not happen? As a faculty member at Temple University, upon seeing the Eagles clinch the NFL Conference Championship, on Sunday, January 29th, I looked into parade operations. In 2018, the parade celebrating the Eagles’ Super Bowl LII win was held the following Thursday. Public transit was halted to Temple’s campus, which disrupted a joint event with Institute for Supply Management.

If the parade were to be held on the Thursday following Super Bowl LVII, it would disrupt a Supply Chain Management consulting event. My first stop was to Google, When is the Super Bowl parade in Philadelphia?, and the response was,“omg, please stop Googling this until the big game actually happens.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 30, 2023). As of earlier this week, Mayor Jim Kenney, “… doesn’t really want to talk about it.”(NBCSports.com, February 7, 2023).

The EA Madden game is going with an Eagles victory (Fortune, February 6, 2023), as are the legalized betting organizations. Still, we forge on with consulting event planning. I took a picture of a long line of portable toilets north of City Hall, which were in preparation for Pope Francis’ visit in 2015. It is to be food for thought about all that goes into planning a parade. “Kansas City officials are planning a multimillion-dollar parade for Feb. 15…,” (The Kansas City Star, February 2, 2023).

I’ll be cheering for the Eagles, but my heart belongs to the Pittsburgh Steelers. If you are like me, this Super Bowl commercial is for you – https://www.youtube.com/watch v=4taNFpPmZag . Still, enjoy the game!

Classroom discussion questions:
1. How can project management be used to plan a parade? What activities will most likely need to be crashed/require crashing cost payment?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Philadelphia’s and Kansas City’s positions? Win or lose, what do they mean for city officials, planners and for workers employed in the hometown, in terms of productivity?
3. How can forecasting be used in the planning process?