Big Crowds, Big Worries – How Philadelphia Used Everbridge for Crowd Management at the 2018 Super Bowl Championship Parade

Through social media and the local press, the City encouraged fans who planned to attend the parade to text READYEAGLES to 888-777 to receive important safety, traffic, and event alerts. Within four days, nearly 100,000 people signed up for the alerts, powered by Everbridge.

Among the timely notifications sent was information pertaining to street closures, transit delays, weather updates, reunification locations for missing persons, and updates along the parade route. In all, more than two million alerts were sent to registrants via Everbridge.

At the post-parade press conference the following day, Daniel Bradley, Director of Emergency Management for the City of Philadelphia, said the text alerts “allowed us to push out to everyone attending this event 28 specific alerts about event information, mass transit locations, and other public safety information.” Bradley then encouraged all Philadelphians “to continue your subscription beyond READYEAGLES by texting READYPHILA  to 888777, and that’s going to give you the same level of service that will allow us to share information about emergencies throughout the city, severe weather, mass transit. That is our unified way to reach all of you.“

The City of Philadelphia previously used Everbridge’s keyword alerts for other large gatherings, including the 2016 Philadelphia Marathon (Keyword: RUNPHL) and Pope Francis’ visit to the city in 2015 (Keyword: PAPALVISIT), which drew an estimated crowd of 800,000 people.