NFL owners will use secret ballot to vote for 2018-2020 Super Bowl host cities

Reporting from CHARLOTTE, N.C. —  NFL owners will vote on whether they should kick off their second century with a Super Bowl in the nation’s second-largest market.

By secret ballot Tuesday, the league’s 32 owners will take the unusual step of naming the host cities for three consecutive Super Bowls, from 2018 through 2020.

Los Angeles, which last played host to the league’s marquee game in 1993, is likely to be awarded the game that caps the 2020 season, the league’s 100th anniversary. That game will be played in early 2021, and one of the expected story lines is the NFL will christen its second century in a $2.6-billion Inglewood venue some owners have described as “transformative.”

“The Super Bowl is going to be big whenever you host it,” said Jed York, whose family owns the San Francisco 49ers. “Whether it’s the first of the next century, or the last of [this] century, it’s going to be huge. To bring the NFL back to L.A., and to host the biggest game in the country, it’s a big deal.”

Five cities/regions are in the mix for some or all of the three Super Bowls that will be chosen: L.A., Atlanta, South Florida, Tampa and New Orleans.

The next two Super Bowls will be played in Houston and Minneapolis, and the most likely order for the three that follow is Atlanta, South Florida, and L.A., which is eligible to host either the game played in early 2020 or 2021.

The decisions will be made at the league’s annual one-day May meetings, held this year at the Ballantyne resort. Representatives for each bidding city/region get 15 minutes to make their pitch. Presenting to the owners on behalf of L.A. will be businessman Casey Wasserman, who is also spearheading the city’s bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games, and Renata Simiril from the LA84 Foundation, the leading funder of youth sports programs in Southern California.

“What L.A. has become in the last 20 years is a radically different city,” Wasserman said. “So the scale of the event, the reach of the event, L.A.’s place as a leader in the world in terms of innovation and creativity and culture … You put a game like the Super Bowl in L.A. and I think it’s a really unique and special combination.”

L.A. is hosting, or is bidding to host, several high-profile sporting events in the coming years. Already secured are the U.S. Amateur golf tournament (Riviera Country Club/Bel Air Country Club) and Walker Cup (Los Angeles Country Club), both in 2017, and the U.S. Open (LACC) in 2023.

L.A. is bidding to host the NFL draft in 2017 and/or 2018, the 2022 Final Four (Inglewood stadium), and the 2024 Olympics.

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