We Talk to Playboy about the Future of the Playboy Super Bowl Party



Posted Jan 14, 2008 8:19 AM By Ken Spalasso

We, here, at Super Sunday HQ, were crushed when we first heard the official announcement from Playboy's Senior Vice President, Public Relations, Lauren Melone that "While we are huge fans of Super Bowl weekend and are participating in the DirectTV Celebrity Beach Bowl event, we will not be hosting a separate party in Tampa." Like Pee Wee Herman searching for his stolen bicycle or the newspaper boy in Better Off Dead looking for his "two dollars," we set out searching for answers from the Super Bowl Party gods at Playboy.

We caught up with Playboy's SVP of Marketing, Lisa Natale, and asked why, if the budget was not available, did Playboy decide not to sell hundreds tickets to keep the party alive this year? She explained "We have such a great reputation, that's just not what we wanted to do. That's not what our VIP's expect from us. It's not what our partners expect from us. We have a lot of celebrities. We have a lot of players. We have a lot of owners. And it's a whole different party if people are buying tickets. We did have a lot of offers for parties this year, from partners and venues, and we did look into a lot of those options. But we really felt the best thing to do was not compromise the integrity of the party or the reputation that we have, so we thought it was the best thing to do for our brand and partners to just hold off so we could hopefully be able to go back next year."

Like the recently-ousted San Diego Chargers and New York Giants, Playboy must look to the 2010 Super Bowl in Miami. "Probably in April we'll start looking at our partners. Its in Miami again. We will start looking for venues as well. We've been putting some budgets together, so in April we will start roundtabling already for plans for next year," said Natale.

Playboy will still be represented during Super Bowl week, as it is sending four playmates to the DirecTV Celebrity Beach Bowl. "This is our second year with DirectTV and they are a big television partner of ours and its a big time event that's a lot of fun. We bring down four playmates and they bring down the football players so we enjoy working with them on that event," said the Playboy executive.

But what about Hugh Hefner, the American Icon, will he be in attendance for the flag football game? Playboy told us "Unfortunately, Hef will not be coming down for that.Hef will have his usual party on Sunday afternoon with a small gathering to watch the game. He does that every year and that won't change."

So what events will Playboy Magazine be planning in the coming months?"Our next event is the South by Southwest music conference in March in Austin, Texas. Also in March we will have our big finale Golf Scramble Party at the Playboy Mansion. Those are our big events for the first quarter of the year," Natale revealed.

While Super Bowl XLIII will not have an official Playboy Party, you can be sure to catch playmates, and Playboy cover girls throughout the entire Super Bowl Week in Tampa. Jenny McCarthy, Kim Kardashian, Vida Guerra, Carmen Electra, and many other playmates have all graced the pages of the magazine, and are hosting parties in Florida.