It’s become a tradition in the NFL for new stadiums to get the chance to host the Super Bowl and the expectation throughout the process of getting the Rams to Los Angeles was that their forthcoming stadium in Inglewood would get that chance as well.
It could come a little bit sooner than expected. The NFL will hold the next two Super Bowls in Houston and Minneapolis and they’ll vote on the locations of the next three games at league meetings in May. Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times reports that Los Angeles will be able to bid on Super Bowls LIV and LV, which will be played after the 2019 and 2020 seasons.
New stadiums have traditionally had to wait until they’ve been up and running for at least two years before being eligible to host the Super Bowl, but Farmer reports that the league’s Super Bowl Advisory Committee will deviate from that “guiding principle” to make the Inglewood stadium a possibility after its inaugural season.
“We began discussions with local leaders almost immediately after the vote on how to bring the Super Bowl to Los Angeles,” Rams executive vice president of football operations Kevin Demoff said. “We’ve continued those discussions with the NFL, and we’re excited by the opportunity to bid for either 2020 or 2021. We recognize there are a lot of great candidates who have already bid, and we’re working quickly to make sure that Los Angeles’ bid can be considered and we can return the Super Bowl to Southern California and Inglewood.”
New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami and Tampa are other cities under consideration for one of the games the league will be voting on in May. The NFL has held seven Super Bowls in the Los Angeles area, but none since the Cowboys beat the Bills in Super Bowl XXVII at the Rose Bowl.