LYNN — Like many thousands of fans that were in San Francisco on Sunday for Super Bowl LX, a few of the staff members at H.O. Zimman, a publishing company, also found themselves returning home after the tough New England Patriots’ 29-13 loss to the Seattle Seahawks.
Home for the printing company is right in Lynn, with offices on the Lynnway. As the official printer for the very Super Bowl programs that were at Levi’s Stadium this weekend on the biggest night of the season, the company is continuing a decades-long run capturing sports history inside its very pages.
Founded in 1940 by Harold O. Zimman, who was raised in Lynn, and his wife, Helen, the company started by creating programs for the US Tennis Association, including the US Open, as well as Ivy League Football, when they found out that the NFL was looking for a new publisher for the Super Bowl. With a reputation that includes creating the first monthly magazine for the U.S. Olympic Committee, of which Zimman served on the board of directors from 1972 to 1988, the company continues to capture what Zimman himself championed: true sports storytelling.
After securing the rights to the Super Bowl program just 23 years ago, this magazine features everything from in-depth scouting reports and season recaps to awards, feature stories, and historical look-backs that true football fans would care about and appreciate.
The process of creating each booklet is not only long but requires meticulous planning ahead, said Kathy Bertagna, director of sales and marketing. They start by creating an early draft of the magazine, or, as she referred to it, “a historical document,” that is detailed and thorough.
“We had a long history of producing these programs,” she said. “When the Super Bowl came along, we really felt like we were ready for it and it was something that we put our own mark on and really run with it.”
They then follow each team’s performance week by week, and by the end of the season, they’ve compiled every bit of information there is to know about every squad. Once it gets down to four teams, the staff puts together a 16-page spread on each team, as if they were headed to the Super Bowl. They keep the final two — which were Seattle and New England this year — and can toss the other pages so that all they have to do is update stats in real-time and do a quick proofread to make sure they haven’t missed anything.
The magazine gets printed on the Sunday before, around midnight and 1 a.m., and by Monday and Tuesday, the booklets, including the Stadium Editions, which are sold in the stadium, have already shipped and are en route to the Super Bowl.
Bertagna, a Gloucester native, is on her 10th Super Bowl, and for the entire company, the excitement was all there for the hometown team to be featured in both the game and in their pages for the first time since 2019.
“It’s been fun. We’re always at the beginning of the season trying to make predictions on who’s going to be in the Super Bowl, and I don’t think any of us in this office said it would be either the Patriots or Seattle,” she said, adding: “It was nice to see kind of a rebirth of enthusiasm around here.”
As they already begin to look ahead at next season, Bertagna revealed that they will also be working with the Olympic Committee for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, as well as the NFL on their first-ever draft guide. “We are all sports fans in the office, which really helps. And we understand kind of what a big deal it is to do this program,” she said.
