Las Vegas to host Super Bowl 63 in 2029

PHOENIX — The Super Bowl’s return to Las Vegas is set, and expectations are already high.

NFL owners approved Las Vegas on Monday as the host city for Super Bowl 63 in 2029 at Allegiant Stadium in a unanimous vote at the Arizona Biltmore hotel.

Las Vegas hosted Super Bowl 58 in 2024 as the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime.

LVCVA president and CEO Steve Hill said that he promised the league’s owners that 2029 would be bigger and better than the last time Southern Nevada hosted America’s biggest annual sporting event.

“This is a city that is built to host,” Hill said. “So the commitment I just made to the owners was that we would raise the bar from Super Bowl 58. That we would go back to work. That we would be innovative. That we would do new things.”

Raiders president Sandra Douglass Morgan emphasized the event will be a product of Hill’s “vision,” and praised him for his collaboration.

As they spoke, their comments were broadcast through a live feed for a simultaneous event outside of Allegiant Stadium, where an estimated 30 media members and 100 community leaders relished the news. They did so with a backdrop of Super Bowl branding on the Raiders’ stadium and giant sparkling Roman numerals “LXIII.”

Super Bowl anticipation

There’s plenty of time to keep drumming up anticipation. The 2027 Super Bowl will be played at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. Then, it will head to Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2028.

The exact date for all of those games, including Super Bowl LXIII in Las Vegas, has yet to be determined. The NFL is considering three different timelines, which NFL executive vice president Peter O’Reilly said is nothing unique.

“There’s not a lot to necessarily read into that obviously important flexibility,” he said. “Whether it has to do with future scheduling changes or otherwise.”

One scenario that would delay a date for Las Vegas event is the league consideration of expanding to an 18-game season, which might include a second bye week.

After 2029

There’s no set rotation that will guarantee Las Vegas gets another Super Bowl after 2029. The league instead focuses on choosing the “right city at the right time,” O’Reilly said.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell released a statement Monday as the news broke, saying the 2024 Super Bowl in Las Vegas “demonstrated the scale, energy and hospitality the city brings to global events.”

According to the City of Las Vegas, the 2024 event drew an estimated 330,000 visitors to Southern Nevada for various events during Super Bowl weekend. That included the 62,000 fans who attended the game.

The event also broke records in television viewership, with a reported 123.4 million domestic and international viewers tuning into the game. If that wasn’t enough of a visibility boost, the report said 14,000 news stories surrounding the 2024 Super Bowl generated 5 billion impressions for Las Vegas.

“It’s a testament to the Raiders, the LVCVA, civic leaders, the community and the NFL working together as one,” Raiders owner Mark Davis said in a statement.

Learning mode

O’Reilly described the 2024 Super Bowl as the training ground for Las Vegas’ next shot at the big game.

“We were all in learning mode the first time around,” O’Reilly said. “We learned a ton, and it all worked really well.”

Not everything was a success, according to 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan. He noted Monday morning that the arrangement of his team practicing at UNLV’s football facility while the Chiefs enjoyed the Raiders’ headquarters wasn’t equitable.

“It really doesn’t matter much when you’re playing in the Super Bowl because you don’t experience anything other than practicing and staying at your hotel,” Shanahan said. “Vegas was just tough because of the field that we got put on. We got put on a different field (than the Chiefs). It’s a different situation when one’s at UNLV in the middle of the city, on the Strip right next to The Sphere, and one’s 30 minutes out at the Raiders facility. That was the hard thing for us.

“You’ve just gotta be lucky and be the home team so you get to pick. But if there’s a place that has two fields, that’s what you prefer.”

ESPN reported in 2024 that field conditions at UNLV were “met with widespread disapproval from various members” of the 49ers organization after the NFL installed a sod field on top of the Rebels’ field turf. That process reportedly started just a week before Super Bowl practices began. The NFL reportedly required Super Bowl practice fields to meet certain standards in December.

That issue was not addressed, but Morgan spoke about the effort for improvement.

“We learned a lot from the NFL when the Super Bowl came, whether it came to security measures, parking or signage,” she said. “I encourage my team to constantly evolve and grow.”