New Orleans gets Arena Bowl XXV

NEW ORLEANS – The Arena Football League (AFL), New Orleans VooDoo and New Orleans Arena have announces that ArenaBowl XXV will be played in New Orleans, adding to the growing list of championships being hosted by the city in 2012.
ArenaBowl XXV will be the fifth sporting event/championship hosted by New Orleans in 2012, joining the BCS National Championship Game, NCAA Final Four, Allstate Sugar Bowl and the 2013 Super Bowl.
“While 2012 marks the Arena Football League’s 25th Anniversary, we aimed to bring the ArenaBowl back to a neutral site. Because of the history of the New Orleans market and its tremendous AFL fan base, we believe New Orleans is the perfect place to celebrate the League’s Silver Anniversary,” said AFL Commissioner Jerry B. Kurz.  “New Orleans served as the host city for the last two neutral site ArenaBowls in 2007 and 2008. The atmosphere at the New Orleans Arena was unbelievable and both events proved to be tremendously successful. We look forward to having ArenaBowl XXV in the city of New Orleans.”
The AFL has not had a neutral site for ArenaBowl since New Orleans did the honor in 2007 and 2008, serving as host to ArenaBowl XXI and XXII.  Since New Orleans last hosted ArenaBowl, the highest seeded team in the game has hosted the championship contest.
Over 17,000 fans attended each of the ArenaBowls New Orleans hosted, which still ranks tops among neutral sites for the championship game.  Las Vegas, Nevada was the only other city in the United States to host ArenaBowl, and did so the two previous years prior to New Orleans.
“I attended both ArenaBowls in New Orleans in ’07 and ’08, and I can easily say that city of New Orleans did a great job of hosting ArenaBowl weeks leading up to the event for fans of all ages.  The New Orleans Arena’s proximity to downtown hotels and the French Quarter, coupled with the great football fans in our city, makes it an ideal location for ArenaBowl,” said New Orleans VooDoo Owner Dan Newman.
In 2008, The New Orleans Sports Foundation estimated that ArenaBowl attracted over 6,000 visitors to the city with 40-percent of the game’s attendees not from the metropolitan area.  It was also reported that each ArenaBowl hosted by the city brought an estimated 15-to-25 million dollars to the city each year.
ArenaBowl XXI in 2007 was the first neutral-site ArenaBowl to sell out, and did so six weeks prior to the actual game, or for fans to know what teams were actual going to be in it.