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It’s not been a good year for the National Football League. I don’t follow the sport at all, but even I know they faced a players’ strike just before the 2011 season was supposed to launch, and that anything to do with the Super Bowl, besides the football itself, has been under fire recently. Who do you call when you want to revamp your image and better organize events for giant crowds? Disney, apparently.
USA Today reports that the NFL has signed up for some training with the Disney Institute. If you don’t remember, the Disney Institute is part of the company’s corporate branch that helps other large groups learn the Disney way of “serving” the public.
Teammates (the volunteers/employees) for the upcoming Super Bowl will undergo Disney Institute training before the event. This comes after quality complaints from last year. At Super Bowl XLV nearly 3,300 fans with tickets in hand showed up, only to be told that their temporary seating (affixed to Cowboys Stadium to accommodate the greater crowds) wasn’t completed or was unsafe. Some of the people were found alternative seating, but others ended up having to watch the game on television in club areas.
The NFL offered disgruntled fans refunds for their tickets in treble, amongst other consolations, but it wasn’t enough. The league was sued, and while all of the trouble is mostly settled now, it casts pallor over the forthcoming Super Bowl. Not to mention that the seating fiasco was just the largest of many other, smaller, problems that plagued the production for the week leading up to Super Sunday.
Given Disney’s positive corporate reputation, and the fact that the Parks handle enormous crowds on a regular basis, it makes sense that the NFL would turn to the House of Mouse for help. What I what to know is: why stop with the logistics?
When I first read the headline that the NFL was appealing to Disney for aid with the upcoming Super Bowl, my mind immediately turned to the beleaguered halftime show. In recent years it’s come under fire; first it faced wardrobe malfunctions, and then when it tried to tone down the show to avoid further problems of a similar nature, people complained it was boring.
I’m not suggesting that the NFL get Disney to completely handle the halftime show production; as much as I personally might love to see a performance of a famous Disney number at halftime, I have a feeling most football fans wouldn’t appreciate that. But Disney regularly has celebrities give performances during their events; given the season the concerts held for the Christmas Day Parade immediately come to mind.
All right, many of the acts that perform for the parade, or for Disney on a normal basis, are of the company’s own channel fare, like Miley Cyrus or Selena Gomez. Plus, these events are pre-recorded instead of being aired live, which would prevent any halftime trouble of the famous Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake variety.
Still, Super Bowl execs could probably learn a thing or two from Disney on how to put together an entertaining halftime show that doesn’t devolve into indecency. No teenybopper songsters required. There’s only one way to find out how much advice the NFL will take from Disney, and we still have several weeks to wait to find out.
Related Articles:
Disney Receives Jane Goodall Leadership Award
The Disneyfication of the Olympics
Breaking into the Disney Vault
Watch the World Cup the Disney Way
*(This image by JohnSeb is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
