The new Nissan Stadium was selected this week to host the 2030 Super Bowl. Getty Images
There’s strong precedent for new NFL stadiums getting to host a Super Bowl — the last nine did — and the lure of major events is a common talking point when teams line up for financial help from taxpayers. Many people continue to labor under a belief that new stadiums always get a new Super Bowl. But precedent isn’t the same as policy, and the NFL’s top two executives have made it clear in recent weeks that a new venue is far from sufficient to host the big game.
“There’s a lot more that goes into hosting the Super Bowl than a stadium,” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL EVP who oversees the Super Bowl. “You need tens of thousands of hotel rooms and an airport that can satisfy the demand. It is a key element, but it is not the element.”
That was even clearer than his boss, Commissioner Roger Goodell, who diplomatically mentioned hotels and airports while celebrating the Browns’ new stadium groundbreaking outside Cleveland in April. “We have probably close to 200,000 people who come into the city,” Goodell said. “It’s great for economic impact, but it’s hard for cities to be able to meet some of those requirements on facilities. So that’s the biggest challenge.”
O’Reilly’s remarks came moments after Nashville was awarded its first Super Bowl on Tuesday. Clearly, that’s a direct result of the city and the Titans building the new, enclosed Nissan Stadium, so it may appear that it’s another data point in favor of the new stadium-Super Bowl connection. But in reality, Nashville underscores O’Reilly’s point, because Nashville’s Super Bowl win only came after the region’s multi-decade growth as a center of culture and entertainment. Can Denver, Kansas City, Cleveland or Buffalo say the same, even with new venues? (Buffalo has always known it can’t host a Super Bowl. One reason its new stadium is open-air.)
What about weather?
Meanwhile, two big markets with new stadiums planned — Chicago and Washington — undoubtedly clear the basic infrastructure bar, but they might face a different challenge: Weather. Their indoor stadiums don’t preclude the real nightmare scenario for the Super Bowl, a major snow or ice event a few days before the game.
This week’s win for Nashville raised this question anew. Nashville will be the Super Bowl host most likely to get extreme cold, snow or ice since Minneapolis in 2018, which is a rather difficult memory for many Super Bowl week regulars, and is farther north than Dallas and Atlanta, two cities with snow/ice-marred Super Bowl weeks in their resume. A big storm would hardly be unprecedented in Nashville.
The league was OK with the climate data in central Tennessee, O’Reilly told me. “It’s a factor,” he acknowledged. “... We do our research and look at what February looks like there. I think the average temperatures, which are a high of like 55 [Fahrenheit], is right in the range of what we’re comfortable with.”
I followed up: “As long as you consider that something under 32 is a true outlier event?” O’Reilly said: “I think that’s right.”
I will note that winter weather would not be an outlier event in Chicago or Washington, but the point isn’t to rule cities in or out based on a single factor. (The value of a Super Bowl within a few miles of every foreign embassy, the White House and Capitol Hill is self-evident, even if it could get cold.)
The point is that Super Bowl hosting is much, much more competitive than it used to be with Allegiant and SoFi stadiums in the mix, and as the event grows, the league sees fewer reasons to tolerate risk, and Nashville’s quick construction-to-Super Bowl path will likely prove to be the exception, not the rule, in this modern building boom.
The Seahawks and Bucs contested the league's first game in Germany at Allianz Stadium in 2022. getty images
On Tuesday, NFL owners voted to drop the policy allowing them to protect their two most lucrative home games from being scheduled overseas, which figures to increase the quality of international games. It was a great illustration of how the league has gradually but persistently twisted arms to turn the international program from a novelty into the league’s biggest growth strategy.
As recently as the 2021 season, international games depended on volunteers and the hosts of Super Bowls, who were required to give up a home game under a 2014 rule. That system tended to incentivize bad teams or teams with small fan bases, because they had less to lose by experimenting. It also gave great weight to the wishes of owners who simply didn’t want to participate.
But once the schedule expanded to 17 games, owners changed a policy to require teams to give up one home game at least every eight years, and dropped the practice of reimbursing teams for their lost gate. This created the mindset that international growth is a shared effort, a cost that’s simply part of being in the NFL. At the same time, the league started to let teams pursue their own commercial revenue in certain countries.
Two years later, the league doubled the requirement, requiring one home game to be shipped overseas every four years for every team. And now, this week, owners agreed to give up a valuable guardrail on which home games they lose.
This pattern has continued with little (public) complaint from teams. I still hear the occasional squabble from team executives who worry most about their annual P+L, but their long-term-minded bosses must be widely supportive. This wasn’t guaranteed to be the case a decade ago. While the ownership fraternity has become somewhat more growth-minded and risk-tolerant since then through sales and generational change, this is another example of how well Goodell and the best owner powerbrokers manage the delicate internal politics.
Also, international policy is a dark horse for a flash point in eventual negotiations with the NFLPA. Of course, the big negotiation will be around the 18th game, which would facilitate more international games. But watch the details too — the league wants as few restrictions as possible on when and how it schedules its overseas slate, but the union has suggested it will seek a bevy of new protections for players who have to travel such far distances.
Precipitous attendance declines in the UFL’s strongest markets have muted a reasonably positive debut in the league’s three new cities, and the league is likely to post its second consecutive year-over-year decline in total attendance.
The St. Louis Battlehawks have averaged crowds of 22,893 through four home games, down 22.5% compared to 2025’s full-year average. In Washington, the D.C. Defenders have drawn an average of 8,769, down 32.6% from 13,026 one year ago. They’re still the two best markets in the league.
With all eight teams still eligible for a spot in the semifinals, league officials hope a close playoff chase will improve the picture somewhat. We’ll hold off on a more comprehensive analysis until the year is over.
All told, the 32 UFL games so far have averaged a crowd of 10,416, down 14.3% from 12,162 in 2025, which was itself down 5% from ’24.
Together, the new markets — Columbus, Louisville and Orlando — have averaged 10,548, up 20.3% above the three markets they replaced together: Detroit, Memphis and San Antonio. Columbus has had three home games; Dallas has had five. All others have had four.
Incidentally, viewership on TV is about flat, up marginally from 622,000 viewers on average last year to 624,000 viewers.
Here’s the full attendance rundown through Week 8, compared to last year:
The Raiders added another tranche of high-profile limited partners, with Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell, Blackstone Head of Global Private Equity Strategies Joseph Baratta and TKO Group executives Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro buying stakes in the team.
Training facilities are becoming places that are about more than working out. In this week’s magazine, SBJ’s Bret McCormick looks at the latest generation of these facilities, such as the Pats’ New Balance Athletics Center and the Browns’ CrossCountry Mortgage Campus.
The NFL added Tixr to its verified ticketing ecosystem called NFL Ticket HQ (formerly NFL Ticket Network). As a new licensed channel, Tixr can now become a primary ticketing partner for NFL teams, a major milestone for the emerging sports ticketer, reports SBJ’s Ethan Joyce.
When Al Michaels calls Amazon Prime Video’s opening regular season game on Sept. 17 — the Lions at Bills at Buffalo’s new Highmark Stadium — it will be the 10th time in the broadcaster’s storied career that he is on the mic for an inaugural regular season game in a new NFL stadium, writes SBJ’s Richard Deitsch.
DAZN acquired the rights to broadcast International Federation of American Football’s flag football games under a multiyear deal.
