With the Buccaneers poised to be the first team to host the Super Bowl at its stadium, discussions about the host cities of Super Bowls are more pertinent than ever.
Super Bowl stadiums are chosen by a committee created for the sole purpose of choosing one. The committee accepts bids from cities hosting their stadiums, and the city with the highest bid typically hosts the game. However, the committee needs to review the city’s stadium to determine its fitness.
This is the second consecutive year that a team in the NFL has played in the Super Bowl in its stadium, as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers hoisted the Lombardi Trophy in Raymond James Stadium last season. In 2024, Allegiant’s Stadium will serve as host, while the 2025 Super Bowl will be held at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The outdoor stadium will hold 70,000 with an option for expansion up to 100,000. Raymond James Stadium hosted the NFL’s first game in 1998. Of course, just like South Floridas Hard Rock Stadium, Raymond James Stadium has also been undergoing renovation projects late.
Seating Capacities and Field Requirements for Super Bowl Stadiums
While the seating capacity at the stadium was reduced from 75,000 to 65,000, its most recent renovation project is at least part of why the NFL is returning to Super Bowl 54 in Miami. Not only did hosting the game benefit the NFL, but the new stadium itself did too.
The practice facility must feature one turf field and at least one surface identical to that at the new Rose Bowl stadium. The indoor event facility must be a minimum of 850,000 square feet (79,000 m2), while the outdoor venue must be at least 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2). The NFL requires up to 30,000 parking spaces near the stadium, part of the more than 100 pages of requirements to be met by host cities.
There can be stadiums in warmer climates that are big enough but do not have dressing rooms to comply with the NFL’s standards, which call for two dressing rooms, each capable of holding 65 players, separate training rooms for each team, and different dressing rooms for the personnel on each team, along with individual, equal offices for every team’s personnel. According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, the Los Angeles Rams will have their usual Super Bowl LVI locker rooms. At the same time, the Bengals are set to use the Chargers (who share SoFi Stadium with the Rams) locker rooms, according to Rapoport.
FIFA and Soccer Stadiums
FIFA, the soccer governing body, said Thursday that Inglewoods SoFi Stadium, the home of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Chargers and the site of this year’s Super Bowl, is among 16 venues set to host the 2026 World Cup. With the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood set to host the Super Bowl, the L.A. area could finally re-join the ranks of the nation’s elite football cities. FIFA announced on Wednesday that 16 North American cities to host matches at the 2026 World Cup, with 11 sites chosen from the U.S., three from Mexico, and two from Canada.
The host of the 1994 World Cup Final, the Rose Bowl, was not chosen, and SoFi Stadium, a different venue in the Los Angeles area, was selected in its place. One year later, the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs defeated the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, 23-7, in Super Bowl IV in New Orleans, the last AFL-NFL world championship game played before the merger.
No NFL team has ever been a tenant of Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto. There is a history of non-NFL stadiums hosting the Super Bowl. Part of why no NFL team had hosted a Super Bowl for the first 54 years of NFL history is that some of these games were played in neutral venues.
Arise is because the winning market was previously not required to host a Super Bowl at the same stadium that their NFL team used, as long as the stadium hosting the Super Bowl was perceived as being better equipped for a big, high-profile event than an existing NFL home stadium in the same city; for instance, Los Angeles past five Super Bowls were all played at the Rose Bowl, which has never been used by any NFL franchise except the Super Bowl.
Noteworthy Bowls and Alternative Venues
The Rose Bowl has never hosted an NFL team on an ongoing basis. In addition to the Rose Bowl, the only other Super Bowl venues not home to NFL teams during the period were Rice Stadium (the Houston Oilers had played in Rice Stadium before but moved to the Astrodome several years before Super Bowl VIII) and Stanford Stadium. NFL rules required that a stadium open for two full seasons before they could host the Super Bowl, so a switch had to be made when construction delays meant the Rams and Chargers could not play at their new stadiums until 2020.
Since Super Bowl venue selections began on May 23, 1990, the league has prioritized brand-new or newly renovated NFL stadiums for the award of Super Bowls, along with the trend of teams either asking for government funding or moving to play in newer stadiums. NFL cities in Detroit, Houston, Dallas, and Indianapolis have all built new stadiums, and increased competition has made it more difficult for cities to land the Super Bowl since the turn of the century.
The site now under construction in Inglewood is expected to be a masterpiece, partly because it will be much more than just a stadium, as suggested by its title–LA Stadium & Entertainment District in Hollywood Park.
With the addition of SoFi Stadium to Inglewood and a nearby YouTube Theatre, local business leaders are hoping that Inglewoods site can be an eminent sports-entertainment center. The complex is already scheduled to host the 2023 College Football Playoff national championship game; L.A. is one of North America’s 2026 means world cup hosts, and itas set to be home to the 2028 Olympics.