Atlanta will bid against Miami, Tampa and New Orleans to host the Super Bowl in 2019 or 2020.
The four cities were formally invited to bid for the games at the NFL owners’ spring meetings in San Francisco late Tuesday, Falcons president and CEO Rich McKay confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Two cities will be chosen to host the games in a vote by NFL owners, likely in May 2016, culminating what will be a year-long bid process.
The league also left open the possibility of adding Los Angeles to the bid process for the 2020 Super Bowl if the city has an NFL team and a plan to open a new stadium by the 2018 season.
Falcons owner Arthur Blank has long made it known that he wants to bring the 2019 Super Bowl to the new Falcons stadium. But Atlanta will bid for both the 2019 and 2020 events, McKay said, hoping to land either one.
“Atlanta is one of the most vibrant and progressive cities in America,” Blank said in a statement provided to the AJC late Tuesday night. “We are thrilled to once again be part of the process to potentially show off our great city and host the world’s greatest sporting event.”
The retractable-roof stadium, under construction next to the Georgia Dome, is slated to open in 2017. The February 2019 Super Bowl is the first that the $1.4 billion-plus stadium would be eligible to host because the NFL requires a venue to be open for two football regular seasons before being the site of the league’s championship game.
Another reason Atlanta might prefer the 2019 event: The new stadium already has been chosen to host a mega-event in 2020, college basketball’s Final Four.
The city plans to submit a bid later this month to host college football’s national championship game in the stadium in January 2018.
Atlanta has hosted the Super Bowl twice previously: 1994 and 2000 in the Georgia Dome.
In recent years, NFL owners have given preference to cities with new stadiums in choosing Super Bowl sites. Of the four cities that will bid for the 2019 and 2020 games, Atlanta is the only one that will have a new stadium. But the Miami Dolphins will boast a $400 million renovation of their stadium.
Two of the next three Super Bowls will be played in new stadiums in their first year of eligibility: the 2016 game in the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium, which opened last year in Santa Clara, Calif., and the 2018 game in the Minnesota Vikings’ yet-to-be-named stadium, which is under construction in Minneapolis and slated to open next year. The 2017 Super Bowl will be played in Houston.
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