Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025 | 2 a.m.
This year’s Super Bowl 59 was widely expected to be Las Vegas’ debut as the host city of the biggest sporting event of the year.
The NFL never officially awarded Las Vegas the 2025 Super Bowl but it was considered a shoo-in after New Orleans was initially announced as the 2024 site. Plans changed when the league moved to a 17-game regular season schedule in 2021, pushing the Super Bowl back a week and making it conflict with Mardi Gras.
Las Vegas and Allegiant Stadium swooped into the rescue, effectively trading with New Orleans to land the big game a year early despite the challenges that presented.
Modern Super Bowl cities typically get at least three years, and up to five years of lead time to prepare, while Las Vegas barely received two ahead of last year’s game that saw the Chiefs down the 49ers 25-22 in overtime.
That made Las Vegas’ first run as host all the more impressive as it drew rave reviews across the board and calls for the game to return as soon as possible.
At the traditional Super Bowl Committee handoff event the day after Super Bowl 58, Gov. Joe Lombardo jokingly asked NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to, “forego your rotation plans for the Super Bowl and maybe get them here sooner than later.”
Goodell laughed but seemed receptive, saying Las Vegas marked “an incredible success,” despite the “increasingly complex” issues it dealt with because of the short lead time.
The buzz back then was that the Super Bowl could be back as soon as 2028, but alas, that will not happen.
The NFL officially awarded Super Bowl 62, scheduled for February 13, 2028, to Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium late last year. Las Vegas did not end up bidding on the game, potentially because Allegiant had already landed one of the biggest sporting events of 2028—college basketball’s Final Four and national championship game on April 1 and 3 of that year.
Allegiant will also host the College Football Playoff National Championship Game on January 27, 2027, so another marquee football game is on the books regardless of when the Super Bowl comes back.
The assignment for Super Bowl 63, tentatively slotted for February 11, 2029, remains available, and on the surface, Las Vegas could be in the running.
Allegiant’s de facto sister venue is Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium, as the two buildings opened in 2020 after multi-billion dollar construction projects. SoFi hosted Super Bowl 56 on February 13, 2022, when the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20, and quickly corralled its second date scheduled for five years later.
Super Bowl 61 will go down on February 14, 2027, at SoFi Stadium.
A five-year wait for Las Vegas would mean the city is in line to host Super Bowl 63, but it’s facing a lot of competition for that particular year.
The Tennessee Titans are opening their New Nissan Stadium for the 2027 season, and team president/CEO Burke Nihill has already talked openly about the team’s desire to host the Super Bowl in 2029.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who wields perhaps the most power in the league, has also expressed a desire to bring the Super Bowl back to North Texas. Jones’ AT&T Stadium has only hosted the Super Bowl once, on February 6, 2011, when the Packers beat the Steelers, 31-25.
Las Vegas remains positioned to host the Super Bowl more frequently than that, but the NFL has repeatedly resisted calls to employ a more set rotation of cities. It may sound prudent to constantly cycle through the most popular stops like New Orleans, Miami, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but there’s no indication that will ever happen.
The NFL likes to give as many of its cities as possible a shot to shine on the Super Bowl stage, even though agreement that Las Vegas made for an ideal setup was fairly unanimous.
The city will surely soar again in its second chance, but it may not be until next decade. It’s not out of the question that Las Vegas could get the 2029 Super Bowl, but 2030 or 2031 are beginning to look more likely.
This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.