Las Vegas may get Super Bowl after canceled NFL draft, Goodell says

While Southern Nevada will not be hosting the NFL Draft in late April, commissioner Roger Goodell’s statement included a note that the league will be evaluating Las Vegas for other marquee events — including the Super Bowl.

The NFL has already set its Super Bowl schedule through the 2023 season, so the earliest Las Vegas and Allegiant Stadium would host the championship game would be February 2025. In the past, there was a bidding process for each city for the event. But that stopped in 2018, when the NFL began to simply award the event after approaching a city and stadium to gauge interest.

Raiders president Marc Badain told a Stadium Authority board meeting in January that the team would be aggressive in pursuing a Super Bowl when the process starts.

And when talking to the Southern Nevada business community, Goodell touted Las Vegas as a Super Bowl city.

“This area, this region, this city, Las Vegas has really done an incredible job growing, diversifying and becoming a world class city,” Goodell said. “It’s really a city that’s on the rise. … And we want to be a part of it. We want to contribute to that.”

The next four Super Bowls will be hosted by Tampa Bay at Raymond James Stadium, Los Angeles at SoFi Stadium, Phoenix at State Farm Stadium and New Orleans at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Super Bowls LVII and LVIII, in Phoenix and New Orleans, were awarded at the league’s spring meeting in May 2018.

They were the first two to be selected under the new process, which had the NFL approach the city instead of the city putting together a bid. The proposal to give the Super Bowls to Phoenix and New Orleans was then put to an anonymous vote by NFL owners and passed unanimously.

The next opportunity for a Super Bowl to be awarded is presumably the league meetings in May — assuming they go on as scheduled from May 19-20 in Marina Del Ray, California. There’s reason to believe the NFL may award Las Vegas a Super Bowl at that time. At his Super Bowl press conference in February, Goodell said the league would get through the draft before focusing on the next batch of Super Bowl hosts.

While the draft’s cancellation will have significant economic consequences for the Las Vegas region — 600,000 people flocked to Nashville last year, resulting in an estimated $224 million impact on the city — Miami’s windfall from hosting Super Bowl LIV in February was an estimated $500 million, according to the South Florida Business Journal.

“We try to pick cities that understand that impact (the Super Bowl) has on the city,” Goodell said in January, explaining that the economic impact on a city hosting the game often exceeds $500 million. “This city here knows how to put on big events. There’s no question about that. It has the infrastructure. … You do have everything here.”

Contact Myles Simmons at msimmons@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350. Follow @MylesASimmons on Twitter.