ATLANTA — The Georgia capital further solidified itself as a major locale for top-tier sporting events as NFL owners awarded the 2028 Super Bowl to Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

The unanimous vote to place Super Bowl LXII at the Falcons’ home facility, though expected for weeks, nonetheless sets up Atlanta as one of the preeminent destinations for championship events. The future sports lineup for Atlanta includes:

• 2025: The College Football Playoff championship game, Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, and part of the FIFA Club World Cup
• 2026: Part of the FIFA men’s World Cup
• 2028: Super Bowl LXII
• 2031: The Final Four in men’s Division I college basketball 

“This is a huge statement about this community, the leadership in both the public and private sectors,” said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. “Atlanta has been known on a global basis as a city that can make things happen.”

Though Atlanta is not a preferred leisure destination in the way that other frequent Super Bowl hosts such as New Orleans and Miami are, the city boasts the world’s busiest airport, a growing and walkable downtown, a solid base of hotels and sought-after restaurants, and one of the industry’s most technologically advanced venues in Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The facility also hosted Super Bowl LIII in 2019, and Falcons owner Arthur Blank championed a repeat bid for not only the stadium, but one that leans in to Atlanta’s continued growth. 

“There’s a lot of things that go into the decision of where a Super Bowl is going to be, and this really shows [the league’s] belief in our franchise, their belief in the city, their belief in the stadium, and their belief in our ability to support another Super Bowl,” Blank said. 

With this awarding, the next four Super Bowl locations are now settled with Atlanta to be preceded by New Orleans (2025), Santa Clara, Calif. (2026), and Inglewood, Calif. (2027). 

Kickoff Dynamics

League officials, meanwhile, said they were encouraged by initial results from the new “dynamic kickoff” rules designed to create more on-field action, fewer touchbacks, and a decrease in severe injuries from that portion of the game. After Goodell previously expressed support for the new rules, data presented to owners Tuesday provided further backing for that. Among the key results:

• Kickoffs are now being returned at a 32% rate through the first six weeks of the regular season, up from 17% at this point last year.
• There has been only one player concussion suffered in the new kickoff format so far, and no major knee injuries such as a torn ligament.
  

While these are specifically on-field rule changes, the shifts surrounding the kickoffs also are helping increase scoring, which, in turn, can boost television viewership. Further tweaks to the rules will likely be considered after the season, when full-year data can be received and analyzed, as opposed to pursuing any midyear changes. 

“There’s a lot more work to do, a lot more study. The sample size is not tremendously large at this point,” said NFL EVP Jeff Miller. “But we did see that lower player velocities [on kickoffs] yielded fewer major injuries in the preseason, and so far we’ve seen that unfold into the regular season.”

The WNBA continues to smash viewership records despite Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever’s elimination nearly two weeks ago.

Game 2 of the Finals between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx averaged 1.34 million viewers Sunday at 3 p.m. ET on ABC, the most-viewed WNBA Finals game in 23 years. It was also the second-most-watched WNBA game on ESPN networks, behind Game 3 of the 1998 Finals, a do-or-die elimination game between the Phoenix Mercury and Houston Comets.

The record-setting figure comes despite direct competition from the NFL’s Week 6 slate. The NFL has cannibalized some of the WNBA’s viewership throughout the 2024 playoffs, most notably in the first round when games that aired on Sundays drew fewer eyeballs than those on Tuesday and Wednesday when there were no NFL games on-air.

The first game of the 2024 Finals, an overtime thriller Thursday, averaged 1.14 million viewers on ESPN, which was the first Finals opener in history to pass one million viewers. 

The series is averaging 1.24 million viewers through two games, 82% more than last year’s Finals. The most-viewed game in last year’s series, which saw the Las Vegas Aces win their second consecutive title by beating the Liberty, was the series-clinching fourth game that averaged 889,000 viewers.

While WNBA viewership is up significantly compared to prior seasons, Caitlin Clark remains the league’s biggest draw. The two playoff games with Clark and the Indiana Fever averaged about 2.2 million viewers, while the league’s regular-season viewership on ESPN networks, which was filled with Fever games, averaged 1.19 million viewers, just below the current Finals average.

The Big Ten and SEC say they aren’t interested in heading up a college football super league, but they are intrigued by the prospect of playing more games against each other.

After leaders from the two conferences shot down multiple outside proposals at meetings in Nashville last week, concrete ideas about how the top half of the Power 4 can keep distancing themselves from the rest of the pack are starting to emerge. The Big Ten and SEC are discussing a new scheduling agreement that could include 16 or more games pitting schools from the conferences against each other every football season, according to USA Today.

SEC teams are 2–1 in non-conference games against Big Ten programs this season. The 18-team Big Ten plays nine conference games each season, while the 16-team SEC plays eight—a point of contention with TV partner Disney.

Earlier this year, the Big Ten and SEC formed a joint advisory committee to guide them in the evolving college sports landscape and were able to secure more than half the future revenue from the expanded College Football Playoff. 

A New World?

With 12 spots now available each postseason (and maybe more in the future), scheduling more tough non-conference opponents isn’t as dangerous to a school’s championship hopes as it once was. 

If the conferences were to agree on a scheduling partnership, games at Big Ten campuses would be broadcast on Fox, CBS, or NBC, while matchups at SEC schools would be on ESPN platforms. Without reworking current contracts, any theoretical deal to sell a Big Ten vs. SEC regular-season TV package couldn’t be done until the next decade.