The NFL has selected the sites for Super Bowl 50 and 51, and now Indianapolis is preparing to bid for number 52.
NFL fans were celebrating Tuesday in Northern California and Texas, after the NFL named San Francisco as the host city for the 2016 Super Bowl and Houston the host city for the 2017 game.
It’s been slightly more than a year since Indianapolis hosted Super Bowl 46, but in a year from now, the city will likely be making a bid for another. Last July, the Indiana Sports Corp. announced that it would consider a bid for 2018, and that sentiment has only grown stronger.
”We’ve had a lot of outreach, even since July, from business and volunteers and so forth, encouraging us to go forward,” said Allison Melangton, Indiana Sports Corp. president. “So I don’t think there’s anything jumping out at me that say that we wouldn’t.”
“We had a really great time,” said Dana Realey, a former Super Bowl volunteer.
Realey is among the volunteers who are excited to see another bid. She worked in the NFL experience during Super Bowl 46, and said she’d do so again in a heartbeat.
“I’d love to see it back here in Indianapolis,” Realey said. “I thought they did a great job. The city was very well prepared for it.”
The Indiana Sports Corp. already knows it will have to prepare to compete with New Orleans and Denver in 2018.
During a news conference Tuesday, Melangton said Denver’s bid will likely be influenced by next year’s Super Bowl in New Jersey because both have outdoor stadiums in cold climates. As for New Orleans, she said the city will likely focus its pitch on the party atmosphere related to Mardi Gras, while Indianapolis will again focus on a community and family atmosphere.
”So I think they are two completely different things and that will be apparent to the NFL,” Melangton said.
It’s unclear whether 2018 will be too soon to see competition from new stadiums planned for Minneapolis and Atlanta, but with bids likely from Miami and Dallas, Melangton said they’ll be ready for anything.
”In the end it’s hard to say how the vote is going to go, but I believe that, if we go forward, we will submit a very compelling bid that will be worth serious consideration,” Melangton said.
If Indy gets the nod again, Dana believes the volunteers will be ready.
“There were a lot of people that were here to work and have fun and I think they’d come out in droves again,” Realey said.
The Indianapolis committee will officially decided whether to submit a 2018 Super Bowl bid in June. The bid process begins in August. The NFL narrows the list of cities in October, and the league announces the 2018 host city in May of next year.
