Exposure is ‘priceless’ despite game’s small crowd

The Orange Bowl game between the University of North Carolina and Texas A&M will be missing glitz and have only a limited live audience, but the media exposure is valuable say local organizers.

Like everything else during these trying pandemic times, the 2021 Capital One Orange Bowl will be a simpler, more understated, less crowded event than usual.

When the North Carolina Tar Heels and Texas A&M Aggies run onto the Hard Rock Stadium field in Miami Gardens on Saturday for their 8 p.m. game, there will be no marching bands or cheerleaders to greet them. No furry mascots. No pregame fan fest in the parking lot. No tailgating.

The halftime show — typically a glitzy extravaganza with dancers and headliners such as Kelly Clarkson, Jake Owen, Ashlee Simpson, Kool & The Gang, ZZ Top, the Doobie Brothers — will consist of a video of halftime-show highlights from years past.

A crowd of 12,500 to 15,000 fans is expected, which is 20% capacity and

a far cry from the sellout of 66,000 who packed the stadium a year ago for the matchup between the University of Florida and Virginia and in February for Super Bowl LIV.

A sign that fans are being extra cautious: There were still some tickets and suites available 72 hours before kickoff.

The participating teams usually bring travel parties of more than 300, spend six nights in South Florida for the Orange Bowl, do some sightseeing, and attend beachfront pep rallies. This time, there are closer to

200 traveling, they were flying in late afternoon/ early evening on Thursday, spending two days and three nights.

They will be mostly confined to their hotels — the Marriott Harbor Beach in Fort Lauderdale and the InterContinental in downtown Miami. Efforts were made to decorate the hotels and provide COVID-safe fun, dining options and player lounges. Both hotels are on the water, so players, coaches, staff and families will have pretty vistas.

In 2018-19, the Orange Bowl and its surrounding events generated an estimated $261 million in economic impact and media exposure, according to the event’s organizers. That figure was based on 67,050 visitors to the area, including 88% of the game attendees from outside South Florida. The report said the events generated 93,000 total hotel nights for the area.

This year will be far different.

Despite the drastically reduced number of tourists coming to South Florida for the Orange Bowl and the College Football Championship on Jan. 11, organizers and tourism officials remain bullish on the positive impact those games will have on the community.

The Orange Bowl is one of the New Year’s Six, the top bowl games in Division 1 football. Each team gets paid $6 million. And the title game is expected to draw a massive TV audience.

ESPN paid $470 million for the College Football Playoff broadcast rights and heavily promotes the games. For the Orange Bowl, ESPN will do its pregame programming remotely. For the championship game, it will set up a “College Game Day”-type studio at Hard Rock Stadium and have days of lead-in promos with picturesque views of South Florida.

“When we look at these events, yes, there is the direct economic impact of folks coming to our town, patronizing our hotels, restaurants, our attractions, and it will be different this year,” said Rolando Aedo, COO of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. “But we view almost equally the value of the media impressions cast across the country, and the world.

“Obviously, we’re in the sales, marketing and PR business, and having people from North Carolina or Texas or anywhere else in the country tuning into these games and seeing the beauty of the destination through all the cutaways — that, frankly, is priceless. We could never, ever purchase the advertising and promotional value that comes with these types of events.”

The GMCVB has marketing campaigns specific to the COVID-era, promoting the area’s beaches, the Everglades, and outdoor dining. The broadcasts of the upcoming football games play into that promotion strategy.

“These are teams whose fans would have traveled in buckets, and it is unfortunate we won’t be able to host as many of those guests from those communities, but we are confident the ones that do, especially with the blessed weather we’re having, we’ve been promoting Miami’s beautiful outdoors, open spaces, parks, beaches, we think that will be further amplified by the fans who get to experience it in person and the ones who see it on TV,” Aedo said.

Eric Poms, the CEO of the Orange Bowl Committee, agreed: “It’s going to be different because it’s 2020, and everyone knows that. But it’s the first time UNC is in the Capital One

Orange Bowl, and the first time in 77 years that Texas A&M is here. Both programs are ascending and excited to play in this game. The media coverage will be like an infomercial for Miami. It’s what the Orange Bowl has been built on for generations, the eyes of the country, in January, looking at tropical South Florida.”

That is exactly what the late Earnie “The Mad Genius” Seiler had in mind in the late 1930s. Seiler was a South Florida visionary who helped lead the Orange Bowl Committee for four decades and turned an ordinary football game into an annual spectacle with elaborate halftime shows and a downtown parade.

The first Orange Bowl was held 85 years ago, on Jan. 1, 1935, at “Miami Field” on the corner of Northwest 15th Avenue and Third Street. A crowd of 5,134 watched the University of Miami play Bucknell. Tickets cost $1 for general admission, $1.50 for reserved seats and $2 for box seats. UM coeds rode around the field on a float throwing oranges to the fans in wooden bleachers.

When Seiler heard that 85,000 fans packed the Rose Bowl to see Alabama beat Stanford that year, he vowed to lure the nation’s top teams to Miami for the Orange Bowl. He used pictures of Miami’s beaches and other attractions to make his sales pitch.

For this year’s game, Orange Bowl organizers had to re-imagine the event amid the uncertainty of pandemic times.

“Starting in February and March we never thought we’d be in this situation,” said Orange Bowl President Jeff Rubin. “What we had to do is start all over, not really knowing whether we’d have any fans, a few fans, 25%, 50%, 100%? We had no idea.

“We’re very lucky to have Hard Rock Stadium as a partner because they have done everything imaginable to make it a safe environment. The inside areas aren’t just restaurant-quality, they’re hospital-quality air.”

Poms and Rubin said they have a diagram that shows exactly which of the

66,000 seats can be occupied and which must remain empty. Small groups and families can watch the game from suites, where they are socially distanced from other fans. Organizers doubled the number of buses so teams and their entourages can travel safely.

The annual AVMED Coaches Luncheon, which normally draws 1,000 people in a hotel ballroom, will be virtual this year with guest speakers, ESPN personalities and Orange Bowl Hall of Fame members.

“Things definitely are different this year, but it’s an opportunity for those fans to get a small winter vacation in a safe environment, and to see teams they haven’t really been able to see in person the past couple of months,” Rubin said. “It is also a great promotion for our community.”

Added Aedo: “Even in pre-pandemic times, these images were manna from heaven that we could showcase these uniquely Miami moments to the rest of the country, who are for the most part shivering. You layer on top of that the pandemic climate we’re in now; and I think there are many reasons Miami will glow, literally and figuratively. The visitor industry is the foundation of the greater Miami economy, and stimulates people to bring their businesses here, relocate here. The media we get from these games are so valuable, even during these times.”