How Super Bowl celebrations are changing after last year’s shooting

Expect more security — and nerves — at this year’s Super Bowl victory celebration regardless of who wins Sunday’s matchup in New Orleans between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles.

A shooting that killed one person and wounded about two dozen others marred last year’s Chiefs victory rally, and a Philadelphia Eagles fan died last month after falling from a light pole while celebrating the team’s NFC championship victory.

Kansas City plans to boost its police presence if the Chiefs win a third-straight title, and Philadelphia might grease its poles to thwart climbers if the Eagles win. New Orleans, which was the scene of a New Year’s Day truck-ramming attack and which is hosting the Super Bowl, plans to block some traffic routes.

“There’s a lot of people that’ll think twice about attending an event like that,” fan Branson Albertson said Thursday as he, his wife and their kids posed for photos inside Kansas City’s Chiefs-bedecked Union Station, near where last year’s shooting happened.

“But I still think there’ll be a big turnout,” he added.

Events like victory parades present unique challenges because they are open, unpredictable and draw large crowds, said Alex del Carmen, an associate dean of the school of criminology at Tarleton State University in Texas.

Last year, Chiefs players were jumping off floats to give fans high-fives as buses filled with the team wound through packed downtown Kansas City. Some of that would likely change this year regardless of where the celebration is held, he said.

Other sports celebration in the U.S. also have ended in gun violence, including a shooting that injured several people in 2023 in downtown Denver after the Nuggets’ NBA championship, and gunfire in 2023 at a parking lot near the Texas Rangers’ World Series parade.

All of these incidents are studied carefully, Del Carmen said.

“What we can do is learn from the past and hopefully last year’s lessons were very, very vivid in the minds of those that are going to be planning these next events,” said del Carmen, who recruited students to help with security when the Super Bowl was played in Arlington, Texas, in 2011.

There are limits to what safety measures organizers can put in place, particularly in Kansas City, which is in a state with few gun restrictions. Last year’s shooting, which appeared to stem from a dispute between several people, happened with more than 800 officers on hand to police an estimated crowd of 1 million people — which comes out to more than 1,000 paradegoers to every officer.

“When you have that many people compacted into a confined space and everybody is shoulder to shoulder, it’s just hard to see everything, is hard to account for everything,” said Jason Armstrong, a former police chief in Ferguson, Missouri, and Apex, North Carolina, who is now a police consultant.

“You know, we just have to have as many eyes out there as we can.”

If the Chiefs win again, there will be 200 additional officers and the parade will move faster, said Mayor Quinton Lucas.

He said last month that the city would “try our level best to make sure that we think of every contingency,” but he acknowledged that some people might not feel comfortable attending.

“I understand that and I get that,” Lucas said.

Sharon Billington, a 63-year-old Chiefs fan who also visited Union Station, said she plans to watch it on TV. She had family at last year’s festivities and was terrified.

“The world is just not in a position to have that right now,” she said of a large rally.

Philadelphia is known for having one of the league’s most rowdy fan bases. In recent years, zealous Eagles fans have climbed street signs, traffic lights, bus shelters and even theater marquees to lead the crowds below in cheers. In 2023, when the Eagles last won a National Football Conference title, a group of people crashed through the hard plastic roof of a bus shelter where they had been dancing, injuring several of them.

But after a college student was killed by falling off a pole following the Eagles’ conference championship last month, Mayor Cherelle Parker is pleading with fans to stay safe.

Officials have sometimes greased the poles ahead of time to thwart such antics — with mixed success — and may do so again this week.

City officials promised they would be ready Sunday, with more police on hand and roads closed near City Hall, the Broad Street corridor, the stadium district and other places fans typically gather.

“The Philadelphia Police Department is on an all-hands-on-deck approach to ensure everyone’s safety,” Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel said Friday. “Our officers will be out in full force across the city, ready to keep the festivities running smoothly.”

“You don’t want to be in a celebratory moment, (and) have a tragedy occur,” Parker, sporting a kelly-green suit in a nod to the team, said after the Eagles clinched a Super Bowl spot.

—Heather Hollingsworth and Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press

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