President Trump will attend Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday.
Trump, 78, will become the first sitting president to attend the NFL’s championship game.
Making a splashy appearance at a major sporting event is nothing new for Trump. Most recently, he attended the Army-Navy game in December in Landover, Md., alongside Vice President JD Vance and other allies.
But Trump has been attending championships since his first term, when he was booed at a World Series game in 2019 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros. Nationals fans even responded with chants of “Lock him up!” while Trump was in attendance.
Trump has also attended major college football games, including the national title game in January 2020, and an October NFL game in Pittsburgh while he was campaigning to return to office.
The Super Bowl is already one of the most tightly secured events worldwide each year. Authorities have been on high alert in New Orleans since New Year’s Day, when a Texas man killed 14 people and wounded 59 others in a vehicular attack in the city’s popular French Quarter.
“If you’re going to take the president anywhere, taking him into an environment that has been planned and designated as a national special security event gives you a bit of an advantage,” former Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow told CNN.