Super Bowl Power Outage Won’t Stop NFL From Returning To New Orleans
By Josh Sanchez
During the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVII, there was a power outage a the stadium that put a halt to action. Members of the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers were forced to wait on the field during a 34-minute delay until play resumed.
After the game, some had voiced a concern that the power outage could discourage the NFL from returning to New Orleans for a Super Bowl in the future, but that does not seem to be the case.
“I fully expect we’ll back for future Super Bowls in New Orleans,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said, per Albert Breer of the NFL Network.
The management company for the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Entergy and SMG, released a statement regarding the power outage:
“Shortly after the beginning of the second half of the Super Bowl in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, a piece of equipment that is designed to monitor electrical load sensed an abnormality in the system. Once the issue was detected, the sensing equipment operated as designed and opened a breaker, causing power to be partially cut to the Superdome in order to isolate the issue. Backup generators kicked in immediately as designed. Entergy and SMG subsequently coordinated start up procedures, ensuring that full power was safely restored to the Superdome. The fault-sensing equipment activated where the Superdome equipment intersects with Entergy’s feed into the facility. There were no additional issues detected. Entergy and SMG will continue to investigate the root cause of the abnormality.”
It was an unfortunate situation, but it had no long term influence on the game. If the 49ers would have ended up winning, the power outage may have been a more prominent story line, but thankfully we are free to continue just talking about the actual football game.