MIAMI _ Keeping score at Super Bowl 54 is not limited to game time. Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke sailed his 281-foot yacht Aquila to Miami for the championship festivities. Never one to be outdone, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones anchored his 357-foot Bravo Eugenia nearby at Watson Island. Their teams may not be playing but their other toys _ boats as long as football fields _ serve notice that the NFL's billionaires are here, along with the thousands of VIPs who transform host cities into bubbles of wealth and extravagance every year.
Jones, net worth $8.2 billion and No. 56 on the Forbes 400 list, has two helipads on the vessel he named after his wife. But Kroenke, net worth $9.7 billion, No. 49 and husband of billionaire Walmart heiress Ann Walton, owns Screaming Eagle, an exclusive Napa winery that produces the country's most expensive wines and once sold a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon for $500,000.
Miami is not just hosting the Super Bowl of football. The city that is at the center of the glam universe this week is also hosting the Super Bowl of super-yachts, the Super Bowl of private jets, the Super Bowl of celebrity sightings, the Super Bowl of catering, the Super Bowl of mega mansion showings, the Super Bowl of DJs, the Super Bowl of corporate networking and the Super Bowl of Super Bowl parties.
Super Bowl LIV has lent its Roman numeral grandiosity to everything surrounding Sunday's big game at Hard Rock Stadium. The one pitting the San Francisco 49ers against the Kansas City Chiefs. Remember?
"The Super Bowl has become such an iconic spectacle that commands so much attention and so many eyeballs that corporate America has to be there because all the cool one-percenters are there," said John Lehmann, president of Uplifteam and a specialist in sports marketing and team building who has worked with clients at five Super Bowls. "The popularity of the NFL has made the Super Bowl the holy grail of marketing and corporate entertainment. The parties, the halftime show, the commercials _ people talk about that as much as the game itself."
It's a competitive scene off the field.
"The Super Bowl is a mecca for promotion, and everyone is trying to get a piece of the action, get their name, brand or product in front of a global audience of consumers," said Mike Palma, owner of Miami Beach hotspot the Clevelander Hotel on Ocean Drive. "It's Miami, which has the distinction of being a vibrant city for night life, and it's saturated with people who have money to spend. I'd say 50% of the visitors are fans and 50% are here for business or parties."
Celebrities _ many of the B-list kind _ use the Super Bowl as an opportunity to showcase their personal image. So you have ex-New England Patriot tight end Rob Gronkowski hosting "Gronk's Beach Party" and ex-NBA center Shaquille O'Neal hosting "Shaq's Fun House."
"Celebrities are brought in by promoters who pay a license fee, and these celebs and athletes are doing it for money, not for fun," said Palma, whose hotel is headquarters for Pepsi's launch of Pepsi Zero. "The Super Bowl is driven by commercial and entertainment interests. There's probably 30 to 40% more product activations in Miami than in other Super Bowl cities."
Realtor Mark Zilbert calls Art Basel "the Super Bowl of luxury real estate," but when the real thing hits town, it amplifies opportunities to show $25 million Miami Beach waterfront estates and $82,000 per month Bal Harbour condo rentals to visitors looking for a second home or to establish residency in low-tax Florida. One broker-hosted party in Miami Beach is targeted at Silicon Valley executives here to cheer the 49ers.
"It's a high-energy, lucrative week for brokers," said Zilbert, a licensed broker at Brown Harris Stevens. "Wealthy people are in town, doing dinners and parties, and they look around at properties and, boom, they want to buy one. The dynamic we're seeing across the country is that homeowners are tired of paying high taxes. We have a lot of clients from the Northeast and Midwest and for the first time California, whereas at the last Super Bowl 10 years ago it was clients from Brazil and Europe."
A Super Bowl in Miami is custom-made for the pleasure yachting crowd. Terminal Island, ferry stop for Fisher Island, has been set up with tents and big-screen TVs for boat owners berthed there.
"I'm calling it the billionaires' tailgating party," Zilbert said. "And they're not just roasting hot dogs."
Likewise, Miami's air space is abuzz with private jets. At least 1,500 are expected to touch down, and to accommodate passengers, Flexjet, a fractional ownership and leasing company, has opened a hospitality lounge at Opa-Locka Executive Airport with food, wine and team paraphernalia for sale.
Bill Hansen has been planning and catering events in Miami for nearly 40 years. He remembers catering Super Bowl soirees at Ron Wood's club in Miami Beach, at Seaquarium _ "Those were bangers, with 2,000 people," he said _ and at his home base of Villa Woodbine in Coconut Grove. This year he's busy at Miami Tower downtown (formerly the Centrust building), Vizcaya, on various yachts and working with Lady Gaga and Harry Styles for their shows at a temporary structure erected next to the Children's Museum on Watson Island.
"What better place to have the Super Bowl than Miami?" he said. "We understand the vibe and we've hosted it 10 times."
Clients' food choices have changed to more healthy requests, including organic, vegan and gluten-free, said Dewey LoSasso, corporate executive chef for Hansen's company and a former restaurant owner and manager. For one event, he had chanterelle and hedgehog mushrooms flown in overnight from Oregon. He's also served Colorado lamb chops and New York strip steak ("Kansas City fans prefer a meat menu," he said), tilefish ceviche, yellowtail snapper with carambola ponzu, vegan vegetable chili with Homestead-grown bacon leaf seasoning, local zucchini blossoms filled with local ricotta and hand-picked herbs from Hansen's garden, liquid nitro basil sun-dried cherry ice cream and $400-per-ounce caviar salad with sweet potato and stone crabs "because you can't have a Super Bowl without stone crabs," he said.
"People want Miami foods and the infusion of Caribbean and Latin flavors," LoSasso said. "They want fresh juices and coconut water. But they are not being too diva-ish. If they are going to invest in a trip to the Super Bowl, they want quality and they're willing to splurge on food and beverage."
A staggering number of parties are swirling around the Super Bowl, including the Celebrating Women in Football fete by Neiman Marcus that featured "many special VIP and celebrity guests, NFL influencers, live music from DJ Rocksteady, live paintings by Didi Contreras, luxury gifting, heavy hors d'oeuvres and signature cocktails."
Note: That's not just any "gifting," and no chips and dip for these "special" guests.
The Big Game, Big Give charity gala takes place Saturday night at a $65 million mansion on Star Island in Miami Beach. It's hosted by filmmaker Michael Bay and "Breaking Bad" actors Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul in honor of Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown. There's a cigar lounge, a live auction (with a $275,000 Lamborghini as the big prize), curated cocktail stations, celebrity "live appearances," and something called a mixology performance. The hosts have added a green twist to dinner.
"The unique VIP lounge experience will include a hemp-based CBD-infused upscale dinner menu in partnership with Colorado-based CBD industry pioneer Charlotte's Web, master blend tastings with $2,000 bottles of Dictator Rum and an herbal paired dinner by celebrity Chef Max Hardy," according to the event press release.
Want something super posh? Miami nightclub E11even is offering a $1.1 million fan package that includes 11 premium-seat game tickets, 11 rooms at the Gabriel hotel and a VIP table at the club.
Other events have been held in Wynwood, at Faena House, on the beach behind the Loews hotel and on the terrace at Perez Art Museum Miami. NFL sponsors and advertisers and dozens of companies that want to recognize customers or enhance relationships with clients descend on Super Bowl cities.
"For example, if you're the marketing director of Pepsi and one of your biggest distributors loves the Chiefs, you can invite him to the Super Bowl and make it a powerful shared experience," Lehmann said. "An investment banker invites clients to the Super Bowl, they play golf, they go out to dinner, they have tickets to the game, they feel appreciated and that results in millions of dollars in additional business. The Super Bowl is the epicenter of these transactions because of its universal appeal."
Miami is expected to draw 100,000 Super Bowl visitors and the game usually draws upwards of 100 million TV viewers.
"Not everybody watches the Oscars," Lehmann said, "but everybody watches the Super Bowl."
