Blog

Nov 01, 2024

Superdome shares Taylor Swift friendship bracelet with Indy | Keith Spera | nola.com

Thanks to Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour, the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans and Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis are now best friends. The Superdome is sending the 140-foot-long inflatable

Thanks to Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour, the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans and Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis are now best friends.

The Superdome is sending the 140-foot-long inflatable friendship bracelet that hung outside the Dome during Swift's three sold-out Eras Tour concerts to Indianapolis for this weekend's concerts at Lucas Oil Stadium.

“Those of us in the tourism industry talk to each other all the time and share information that allows us to do our jobs better,” said Andy Mallon, executive director of the Capital Improvement Board, the municipal corporation that manages Lucas Oil Stadium, in a news release.

“The sharing of a friendship bracelet, however, takes things to a whole new level.”

The idea for the giant inflatable friendship bracelet originated with Abby Jones, the director of sales and marketing for the local office of ASM, the company that manages the Superdome, as a way "to welcome all of the Taylor Swift fans to the Caesars Superdome that showed exactly how excited and appreciative we are that they were coming, not only to our show dates, but also to the city of New Orleans," Jones said.

Fans pose for photos below a giant friendship bracelet hanging on the side of the Caesar's Superdome for the Taylor Swift concert in New Orleans on Friday, October 25, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)

Jones got approval from Swift's team, then recruited Shawn Kolodny, a Miami-based artist who specializes in large, inflatable installations, to create the huge bracelets.

Made of nylon, each bead in the 140-foot-long strand with a letter on it is seven feet tall, inflated by blowers.

“It’s like a giant friendship bracelet bouncy house,” Kolodny said.

The super-sized inflatable strand spelling out "Taylor Swift The Eras Tour" proved extremely popular with the Swifties who filled the Superdome -- to the tune of 65,000 strong per night -- last Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Fans took countless selfies posing in front of the huge bracelets.

Swift herself acknowledged them from the stage each night. “I showed up one day and you guys were trading friendship bracelets and I was like, ‘That’s cool,’" she said during Friday's show. "And now there’s a giant friendship bracelet on the outside of this stadium.”

Taylor Swift fan Ava Pair, 7, wears a stack of friendship bracelets on her arm on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (Staff photo by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune)

Many Swifties subsequently inquired about the Dome possibly sharing the beads with the three remaining stadiums on the Eras Tour in Indianapolis, Toronto and Vancouver.

Caesars Superdome general manager Evan Holmes reached out to Lucas Oil Stadium director Eric Neuburger. Neuburger readily accepted.

“Indy has a longstanding tradition of cooperative relationships and they don’t stop at the downtown mile square outline, or the city limits, or a state line,” Neuburger said in a news release.

“We like to believe that hospitality has no limits and friendships can exist everywhere. We saw the bracelets on the Superdome early on and thought it was such a cool idea, so we happily accepted the offer to bring them to Indy and are grateful to New Orleans for its generosity.”

Just as thousands of Swifties swapped homemade friendship bracelets inside the Dome over the weekend, the Dome has now shared its giant bracelet with Lucas Oil Stadium, the home of the Colts. It will hang from the stadium's north side during this weekend's shows.

Indy can only hope its Swift weekend is as successful as New Orleans'.

“The overwhelming support, joy, and enthusiasm we had the opportunity to experience by hosting Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour and her fan base was immeasurable,” Jones said in a news release.

“It was felt not only by our team members and partners at Caesars Superdome, but by the entire city. When given the opportunity to pay this forward and continue the connections, we jumped at the chance to do so.”

Email Keith Spera at [email protected].