HOUSTON — Good morning. This is Leadoff, the early buzz in Atlanta sports, Super Bowl edition.
Will the Super Bowl be played indoors or outdoors? Will the retractable roof of NRG Stadium be open or closed on Sunday?
That is still up in the air, although the NFL has said it would like to play the game with the roof open if the weather is favorable.
A final decision is expected to be made no sooner than Saturday and possibly as late as game day.
“If the weather cooperates with us, which we hope it does, the roof will be open,” NFL director of events Eric Finkelstein said at a media briefing last week.
The weather has been terrific here so far this week. The current forecast for Sunday calls for a day-time high of 77 degrees with a 50-percent chance of showers that diminishes through the afternoon. Kickoff is 6:30 p.m. ET.
NRG Stadium’s roof is rarely open for Houston Texans’ home games. In fact, it was closed for all of the Texans’ games there this season.
The team’s guidelines call for the roof to be open if the temperature is below 78 degrees and above 65 degrees with no chance of rain in the forecast.
When the stadium — named Reliant Stadium at the time — hosted the 2004 Super Bowl, the roof was closed because of rain in the forecast. (The Patriots played an NFC South team in that Super Bowl, too, beating the Carolina Panthers 32-29.)
Falcons fans will get accustomed to the open-or-closed question because Atlanta’s new Mercedes-Benz Stadium will have a retractable roof. Falcons owner Arthur Blank and team president Rich McKay have said they intend for the roof to be open for as many games as possible there.
“For football, we want it to be open for eight games (a year) — or get to nine games, that would be great,” McKay told a sports facilities conference last fall. “But we don’t want it to be open for only five games.”
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StubHub reports that purchasers from Massachusetts have bought slightly more Super Bowl tickets on the online ticket exchange than have buyers from Georgia.
Fifteen percent of sales have been to Massachusetts buyers and 13.5 percent to Georgians, StubHub said.
The most sales — 20 percent — have been to buyers from Texas. That’s partly because the game is in Houston and partly because of early buying on the secondary market by Cowboys fans who were optimistic their team would reach the Super Bowl.
Almost 8 percent of purchases have been made by international buyers, StubHub said. That includes buyers from 18 countries and as far away as Australia, Japan and South Africa.
The average resale price to date for the Falcons-Patriots game has been $4,439, down almost 12 percent from the same point before last year’s Denver-Carolina Super Bowl, according to StubHub.
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Playing the numbers game:
$5,000,000: Reported cost of a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl.
140,000: Out-of-town visitors expected to come to Houston for the Super Bowl and related festivities, almost double the number of seats in NRG Stadium.
5,000: Media members expected to cover Sunday’s game.
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