2006 Tournament of Roses Website

The Tournament of Roses began in 1890 with a little parade of decorated carriages through the streets of Pasadena. Over the years the little festival has grown, the carriages have become floats, and all over the world people sit and watch the "little parade" on television.

In 1995 the Tournament of Roses tried a new place for their parade, the Internet. They chose Pasadena based CityCenter Co. to create their first website.

The original site had just ten pages with only a few pictures but it gave the Tournament a web presence and began a long and happy partnership.

Tournament of Roses Historical Photo Gallery

Interesting to note is how the Tournament measures the success of the website. Success is determined by "Phone calls not received." The more information provided by the site the less time Tournament staff has to spend answering phone calls. During peak times, October through January every year, the site is visited by more than half a million people. While we do not know exactly how many of them would have called in, even a small percentage is a lot of calls.

The site grew larger every year until 2000, at which time it underwent a complete redesign to its current architecture and look. The site was broken into six main areas of interest with distinct but consistent designs. More information was added and, by popular demand, more pictures.

Rose Parade Photo Timeline

Growth continued and in 2001 we added the Historical Photo Gallery.
This gallery contains slideshows of:

• Rose Queens since 1905
• Grand Marshals since 1890
• The Rose Parade from its inception in 1890
• The Rose Bowl Game from 1902 including game highlights
• And photo archives of award winning floats from past parades,

thus adding hundreds of historic and current photos to the site.

This addition reduced calls into the Tournament offices considerably by answering many more of the most common questions people ask throughout the year.

The site continued to grow and got a new update in 2005 to its current look, but the work is not done. Watch for new features coming in the coming months.

Check out more of the sites in our Portfolio.