NEW ORLEANS — If you haven’t heard—and you probably have—Sunday’s Super Bowl will be this city’s record-tying 11th. People rave about the walkable downtown food and party scene and how the $550 million renovation of Caesars Superdome has brought the 49-year-old venue up to Big Game standards.

That’s the rose-colored-glasses view. The game Sunday is only the second New Orleans Super Bowl since 2002, and a new wave of sleek, modern stadiums threatens to further reduce the Crescent City’s status as a regular host of the NFL’s season-ending game.

Through the first 36 Super Bowls, nine were in New Orleans, or one in four (the first three were at Tulane Stadium, which closed in 1979 and has since been demolished). Of the next 23, including Sunday’s, New Orleans has had just two. And now Los Angeles and Las Vegas threaten to scoop up Super Bowls the way New Orleans once did, as does the new Nashville stadium, and potentially one in the Washington, D.C., area. That’s not to mention regulars Phoenix and Miami, which boast more modern stadiums and are bustling growth cities. The next two are in Santa Clara—its second in 10 years—and Los Angeles in 2027, its second in five years.

More Hotels Needed

Hotel rates are through the roof in New Orleans, which has a quarter of the hotel inventory as Las Vegas did last year. On Location, the hospitality provider for the NFL, ran out of space in New Orleans and placed some customers in Biloxi, Miss., an hour away.

“Hotel inventory is so incredibly scarce,” said Deanna Forgione Carey, an On Location general manager. She views the slim hotel space—with nightly rates at luxury hotels going for around $15,000—as a sign that New Orleans is a coveted travel destination. And that it clearly is, evidenced by Mardi Gras and the crowded French Quarter.

“It’s a great market, the food, entertainment, culture,” Forgione Carey said, who added this Super Bowl is one of On Location’s most in-demand.

But the expectations for Super Bowl cities are changing, and New Orleans has a lot of dated building stock, evidenced by run-down areas adjacent to the Superdome. Construction cranes dot the skylines of cities like Miami, Nashville, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. New Orleans likely needs to upgrade its hotels and add more if it plans to stay competitive in the Super Bowl host city derby.

Take Atlanta, which will host the Super Bowl in 2028, where thousands of hotel rooms are currently going up within walking distance of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, in a city that already had a healthy supply.

“I think we got 20,000 hotel rooms, within walkable distance from our stadium, and then Centennial Yards is a new project, if you haven’t heard of that, maybe look into that,” said Falcons president Greg Beadles. “That’s going to be a $5 [billion] to $6 billion project that Tony Ressler, the Hawks owner is a partner in and so they’ve already started that right across from the stadium.”

Are Renovations Enough?

Superdome GM Evan Holmes points to the $550 million renovation of the venue, which added escalators, elevators, wider concourses, electrical upgrades, and a new cooling system, as evidence the venue is Big Game–ready. Whether the building will need to do more for future contests is unclear. However, there is still at least one eyesore: The press center for Super Bowl Opening Night was in an old, attached parking garage, with port-a-potties and a non-working portable sink.

Maybe great food, culture, and character will be enough to bring the Super Bowl back. But at the very least, it could be a long wait.

NEW ORLEANS — It’s a little early for the first battle of the NFL collective bargaining negotiations to commence, but not for skirmishes. This 2025 Super Bowl week may well become known for the initial grappling over the CBA, which expires in 2031.

NFL Players Association executive director Lloyd Howell, who’s been in the post for 18 months, took a decidedly different tone than he did in his introductory press conference at the 2024 Super Bowl in Las Vegas, where he was conciliatory and seemed open to an 18-game season. This week, however, Howell slammed the idea.

“The first time I heard Roger mention 18, I think it was draft weekend, and he did an interview on The Pat McAfee Show,” Howell said of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. “And so the first conversation we had was, ‘Did I hear you?’”

Players on the Super Bowl week panel with Howell, including NFLPA team president Jalen Reeves-Maybin and Austin Ekeler, threw scorn not just at 18 games, but also 17, which the NFL went to in 2021. NFLPA players narrowly passed the 2020 CBA that added the 17th game, suggesting the league will have a tough negotiation on its hands in the future if it pushes for one more game, given the disdain expressed for 17.

That’s likely why Goodell sought to turn down the temperature Monday in saying 18-game discussions would wait for formal CBA talks, after pushing the idea last year.

The NFLPA also rained on the NFL’s announcement of a regular-season game in Australia in 2026, saying hours later it had concerns about the lengthy travel effects on player health and safety.

The NFL locked out the players in 2011 when CBA talks hit an impasse. After four and a half months of litigation and further talks, the sides signed a 10-year CBA. In 2020 the parties agreed to another decade-long labor pact, which had substantial player opposition. CBA talks typically heat up several years before expiration. But as this week’s muscle-flexing signals, the public jockeying starts even earlier.

NEW ORLEANS — The NFL is expected to announce Friday morning a 2025 game in Dublin, Ireland, a long-expected move that is sure to cause a lot fewer waves than the league’s time-zone-hopping deal to play games in Australia starting in 2026.

The Steelers are likely to be the home team, given their ties to the Emerald Isle. The late owner of the team, Dan Rooney, served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Ireland from 2009 to 2012.

The NFL will likely play seven international games in 2025: one in Ireland, one in Brazil (that is still being worked on), one in Spain, one in Germany, and three in England. The league eyed an eighth in Mexico, but Estadio Azteca in Mexico City is under renovation to meet standards for the 2026 World Cup.

The NFL Players Association greeted the NFL’s Australian development with consternation. While Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s EVP of international and league events, said the union had been consulted, the association expressed concern over what such a long trip would do to player health and safety. Melbourne is 16 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, and 19 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time.

Ireland poses fewer concerns, as there is a five-hour time difference with the East Coast. But NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell on Wednesday questioned the NFL’s international gambit and whether the league was truly prioritizing players’ well-being. He also said the union would need to sign off on more than 10 international games. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has targeted ultimately playing 16 games a season outside the U.S.

The PGA Tour’s rowdiest event is trying to tame things down this week.

After major issues around crowd control and fan behavior in 2024, the WM Phoenix Open, which began Thursday, has new precautions and policies in place to prevent further problems.

Headlined by the 17,000-seat stadium surrounding TPC Scottsdale’s 16th hole (a short par-3) and annually played on the same weekend as the Super Bowl, “The People’s Open” (as it’s nicknamed) attracts the largest, and wildest, crowds in golf—so much so that the tournament stopped releasing attendance numbers in 2019. In 2018, more than 700,000 fans turned out to the event.

The energy that the 16th hole Coliseum creates buzzes throughout the entire course, which is filled with booze-driven bachelor and bachelorette parties and tens of thousands of fans who likely wouldn’t attend a more traditional golf tournament.

Last year, things got out of hand.

The weather was unusually cold for Arizona in February and several days of rain created muddy and soggy conditions at TPC Scottsdale. On Saturday, play was suspended during the third round, and fans let loose.

Videos of drunk fans turning hills into mudslides and stumbling throughout the grounds percolated social media. Arrests skyrocketed. At one point, the tournament had to close entry at one gate and suspend alcohol sales.

All in all, despite the Phoenix Open’s nontraditional flair, it was a bad look for everyone involved.

This year, organizers have added a new fan entrance, expanded spectator sidewalks inside the course, and relocated many food and alcohol vendors. Tickets have also gone 100% digital, replacing physical general-admission tickets and good-any-day tickets.

Despite the changes, more than 200,000 fans will still be expected to show up on Saturday alone, hoping to catch a glimpse of No. 1–ranked Scottie Scheffler, who is the main draw at the tournament offering $9.2 million in prize money.