NFL running it back in Vegas with Super Bowl LXIII in '29
· Yahoo Sports
LAS VEGAS — Usually, the sequel isn’t as good as the original.
And if what we witnessed outside Allegiant Stadium Monday is a harbinger of things to come in 2029, man, are we in trouble.
A windy day that saw the perfunctory pair of Vegas showgirls grasping for their feathers as Mother Nature did her best to force the gals to literally hold on to their hats. A couple of false starts from Phoenix, where the NFL owners were meeting and ultimately voted unanimously to give Las Vegas a second Super Bowl after a successful showing in 2024 with Super Bowl 58.
And of course, a little irony as the MGM’s Bet MGM ad was shown on the outside skin of Allegiant, as if to tell the NFL, “See, you didn’t win after all” after years of being barred by the league from advertising during its showcase event. Meanwhile, workers were still putting the finishing touches on the “LXIII” sign adjacent to the stage.
But don’t let any of this discourage you. Getting the Super Bowl back here was a no-brainer, especially after Sam Joffray and his Las Vegas Host Committee staff and helpers did such a bang-up job during Super Bowl 58.
I was hoping Sam would come back for the sequel. Nope. He’s staying in New Orleans. Instead, it’s on the shoulders of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to make it work.
Steve Hill, the main man at the LVCVA, promises it’ll be bigger and better this time around. How? He didn’t say. I’m sure at some point he’ll tell us. But on days like this when announcements are made, it’s short on news and long on back-slapping. And boy, was there a lot of that going on. From Raiders owner Mark Davis and team president Sandra Douglass Morgan to Hill and Janis Burke, who has recently come on board with the LVCVA to Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo and Clark County Commission chair Michael Naft, the congratulations were flying like the confetti that was let loose after the NFL officially announced the news.
Hopefully, things will go smoothly. It was well-organized in 2024 and the proximity of hotels and events to Allegiant Stadium was really good. And Super Bowl 58 provided one of the great games as the Chiefs beat the 49ers in overtime, 25-22.
If it wasn’t good, the NFL would never come back. Justin Corley, the Raiders’ senior vice president who helps oversee Allegiant Stadium was hopeful that Monday’s announcement won’t be the last for Las Vegas and the Super Bowl.
“Hopefully this puts us in the rotation going forward,” he said.
What it does is sets up Allegiant as a nice Pick-3 of major sports events. The College Football Playoff championship game is set for Jan. 25, 2027. The NCAA Men’s Final Four basketball tournament will be held April 1-3 in 2028. And now there’s Super Bowl LVIII in 2029.
Yes, Super Bowls are expensive to stage. They can be logistical headaches, depending on the locale. But they can also bring pride to a community, create short-term jobs for locals, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the host city.
I rarely believe figures from economic impact studies became the numbers are so easy to manipulate. But when my longtime friend Howard Stutz of the Nevada Independent says the economic impact from Super Bowl 58 in 2024 was over $1 billion, I tend to believe him. Howard doesn’t pull numbers out of his butt. He does his research.
So yes, the bar has been set high. Hill believes the city will clear it and then some. We’ll see. But one thing is certain, without Allegiant Stadium there is no Super Bowl in Las Vegas. And no CFP title game or Final Four hoops either.
Maybe, just maybe, the sequel will be better than the original. They’ve got just under three years to make it happen.
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