The NFL never discusses its host city selection procedures publicly. But experts familiar with the process say growth, in and of itself, is not the primary consideration for the executives and owners who decide which cities host the Super Bowl. If it were, the game would likely be confined to the most obvious big markets, and AT&T Stadium in Dallas — still the gold standard for pure moneymaking potential — would have had more than one game to date.
Most internal deliberation and questions for the would-be host committee revolve around technical capacity to execute the event and handle the crowds, cost certainty (closely related to public sector support for the game) and distinctiveness.
“I think they’re asking: What is it that makes this special and unique?” said Frank Supovitz, who was the NFL executive overseeing the Super Bowl from 2005 to 2014. “Because if you don’t do that — and I think the NFL does that very well — you risk commoditizing the Super Bowl, or homogenizing it to the point where only the game is different every year. But the whole experience should be different every year.”
The event’s growth trajectory still colors the future host selection conversation, because it’s getting harder for smaller cities to keep up. With Las Vegas and Los Angeles having joined the Super Bowl roster in the last five years with ideal weather, ample hotel rooms and proven, high-revenue-capable new stadiums, it’s harder to find space in the rotation for cities with less obvious appeal. Even a historical favorite, New Orleans, fights a real perception that it’s too small for the modern excess of the Super Bowl.
“They do a great job, but I left last year thinking we wouldn’t be coming back; the Super Bowl has outgrown New Orleans,” said one veteran sports business executive.
It remains conventional wisdom that cities and teams that build new stadiums are rewarded with a Super Bowl, and of course nobody from the NFL or the local team dissuades that narrative when building political support for funding. If that’s still true, then the ongoing stadium construction boom would soon lead to a return to the 2010s “rotation,” in which 10 different cities hosted in a span of 10 years.
But some insiders question whether that’s really the case. They note that the era of unusual markets hosting one-off Super Bowls (such as Jacksonville in 2005, Indianapolis in 2012 or the cold-weather visit to northern New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium in 2014) came in a period of an overall Super Bowl-quality stadium shortage.
Now, with Los Angeles and Las Vegas in the mix, mid-sized markets such as Kansas City and Cleveland — even with new, enclosed stadiums — will have a harder time answering questions about hotel room capacity and other infrastructure, and the basic risk of doing something for the first time when other cities can tap a proven playbook. “The event itself is one thing,” said one source. “But that’s so little of what the Super Bowl really is. The experience is so much dictated by the market.”
That’s not to say it will be impossible for unconventional cities; only that they’re in a far more competitive environment than they used to be. “If you’re a fringe host or a first-timer, they need to do something special [to win a bid],” one person familiar with recent bidding said.
