It is a tradition stretching back nearly 40 years, a masterful marketing campaign and as iconic a part of the post-Super Bowl celebrations as the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
“What are you going to do next?” each year’s Super Bowl MVP is asked.
“I’m going to Disneyland!”
The reply is always the same. Well, almost. Sometimes the Super Bowl’s standout performer offers a slight variation on the theme, saying they’re going to Walt Disney World.
It comes across as an off-the-cuff moment in the celebratory hubbub after the NFL’s showpiece game has culminated, with confetti still falling and the hordes of players staff and media still flooding the field.
Yet it is anything but.
The first player to utter those now-famous words was New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms after Super Bowl XXI in 1987. And he was paid $50,000 to do so.
Christian Thompson/Disneyland Resort via Getty Images
According to former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, the advertising campaign was an idea suggested by his wife, Jane Breckenridge. At a dinner party, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager – the co-pilots of Voyager, the first aircraft to fly nonstop around the world – were asked what they planned to do next.
“Well, we're going to Disneyland,” Rutan replied. Breckenridge urged her husband to use the line in ads.
And so Simms was paid to promote the theme park after being crowned Super Bowl MVP and a marketing tradition was born.
Almost every year since, some version of the same phrase has been broadcast to the world at the end of the most-watched one-off event in sports.
These iconic words have transcended the NFL, too. Disney’s savvy advertising line has been triumphantly declared after the NBA Finals, the baseball World Series, the Winter Olympics, the FIFA Women’s World Cup and even American Idol.
And every year, the Super Bowl MVP does actually go to Disneyland in California, or another of Disney’s resorts, taking part in a parade in their honour a day after lofting the Lombardi.
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