NFL Canada has announced the first league-sanctioned Super Bowl party in Canada, an event designed to reward the NFL’s Canadian sponsors.
The party will feature an appearance by NFL legend Jerry Rice and provide activation opportunities for several of NFL Canada’s corporate partners, including Samsung, McCain Foods, EA Sports, Tourism Toronto and Rogers Communications.
The game between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers will be shown on several Samsung televisions while attendees can also relax in “lounge” areas, watch highlights from NFL Films and play EA’s Madden NFL 2011 videogame.
Samsung will give away two televisions at the event, while McCain will award free pizza for a year in a prize draw. Other prize packs include Rogers’ NFL Sunday Ticket television package and tickets to 2011 regular-season games.
Dan Quinn, managing director of NFL Canada, said the party gives the league’s Canadian partners a chance to leverage the Super Bowl at home.
“One of our challenges each year is that our sponsors, broadcasters and licensees want to get access to Super Bowl tickets, and there’s only so many tickets available,” said Quinn, who added that most of the sponsors involved in the party have been league partners for several years. “From a hospitality perspective, people said that if there was an opportunity to create some type of event in Toronto that partners could be associated with, it might work.”
Helping NFL Canada to organize the event is the Vision Group, which created the Molson Canadian Hockey House for last February’s Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Quinn added that although members of the general public will be in attendance, the event is geared primarily toward the league’s business partners.
“It’s something that was really designed more from a corporate perspective, but there will be a fan element as well.”
NFL International has hosted annual Super Bowl parties in England and Mexico in previous years, but 2011 marks the first year that Canada has been included.
“We thought that, given the success of other corporate hospitality events that we’ve seen, it made sense for us to try to do something like that in Canada.”
