Super Bowl Poll Leaves Arlington With a Black Eye

From the economy to the image of North Texas, everyone had high hopes for the impact of Super Bowl XLV. But according to one national poll, the event may have done the opposite for the game’s host city.

Competitive Edge Research & Communication does a poll on the Super Bowl host city before and after the game every year. The organization randomly choose 500 people throughout the United States to take part in the phone poll. The participants do not have to be at the game.

Preliminary results on Super Bowl 45 show Arlington’s positive image went from 10.2 percent before the game down to 5.6 percent after. But it also showed that before the game, 73.7 percent of those polled had no impression of the city, while after the game that number went up to 74.4 percent.

Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck thought the poll might be a little blemished. Aside from that, he said the issues that happen surrounding the poll had nothing to do with the city itself.

“A lot of things like that winter weather, ice falling off the roof and hurting people, the seating fiasco that occurred, none of that was city business, of course, and we had nothing to do with it. Certainly if we could have stopped the snow we would have done it. I tried to stop it," Cluck said.

Also according to Competitive Edge, 8 in 10 viewers agreed the game itself was actually really good -- 15 percent thought it was one of the best games ever and 37 percent thought it was better than average.

The full report will be released Tuesday.

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