Juvenile isn’t just excited about football returning to his city for Super Bowl LIX.
He sees the February 2025 showdown at Caesars Superdome as something much bigger—a chance for New Orleans to showcase its resilience, culture, and economic recovery nearly two decades after Hurricane Katrina reshaped the city’s landscape.
With the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles set for a high-stakes rematch of Super Bowl LVII, anticipation for the big game is already building.
Yet for Juvenile, a New Orleans native and Hip-Hop legend, the real victory goes beyond the field.
“We feel like we got a chance, man,” he told Apple Music. “And now what I like about this Super Bowl is the fact that the local vendors and the local businesses are getting a lot of business and getting opportunities that they didn’t have in the Super Bowls in the past.”
The impact isn’t small—forecasters predict the Super Bowl will inject more than $500 million into the local economy, with hospitality, tourism, and small businesses reaping the benefits.
An estimated 200,000 visitors will flood the city during Super Bowl weekend, doubling the number of tourists and reinforcing New Orleans’ status as a premier event destination.
These figures matter for a city still fighting to regain its pre-Katrina population.
New Orleans had about 484,674 residents in 2000, but after the storm in 2005, that number dropped dramatically to 230,172.
While it has recovered in the years since, the 2020 Census shows the city is still approximately 100,000 people short of where it once was.
“I would say we 60% back,” Juvenile said. “We still have yet to have a lot of… A lot of people got away from New Orleans and realized, ‘I like life out here.’ And didn’t want to come back. And then a lot of people just wasn’t financially able to come back. They lost their homes, and wherever they was at was where they was at.”
Beyond benefiting the economy, the influx of visitors for Super Bowl LIX will support over 5,000 full- and part-time jobs.
Infrastructure improvements tied to the event will also bring long-term advantages, helping push New Orleans further along in its recovery.
“What’s going on now right here is we just trying to keep on rebuilding that culture that we once had, ’cause we don’t have a lot of people here. So it’s kind of hard, but we sticking to it.”
The game, airing on FOX and streaming on Tubi, will kick off at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT on Feb. 9, 2025.