After glut of sports events, Arizona faces drought
MINNEAPOLIS — Arizonans are accustomed to welcoming winter and spring visitors, including in-laws, the NCAA and the NFL. The past couple of years were especially busy for us.
We hosted the Final Four last spring, the college football championship game in 2016 and a Super Bowl the year before that.
But we’re getting a breather — a long one.
The Super Bowl and Final Four are booked through 2022, and the College Football Playoff through 2024.
Arizona will remain in the mix for
“All these things take a lot of work by a lot of partners, but they’re worth it when you look at the return to the community (and) the amount of economic impact.” Michael Bidwill Cardinals president
those events, but it’s hard to imagine they all will come to University of Phoenix Stadium over a two-year period again.
“We are optimistic that one or more of these mega-events will return to Arizona in the near future,” said Debbie Johnson, executive director of the Arizona Office of Tourism and co-chair of the Final Four host committee last year. “But we don’t rest on our laurels. Remember, that was our first Final Four last spring. We’ve promised to learn from our collective hosting experience and, if selected to host one of these events again, deliver an even better experience for the respective entity and their athletes, staff and fans.”
It’s impossible to predict with any degree of certainty when Arizona might host those events again. The NFL, for instance, is changing the way it selects sites for the Super Bowl.
In the past, three or so cities would bid for a Super Bowl, and NFL owners would vote. Starting this year, however, league officials will pick a city and begin negotiating a deal to bring a Super Bowl there. The NFL’s goal is to have greater control over where its championship game is played, rather than leave it to multiple cities and boosters to lobby owners for votes.
“The process is really focused on identifying the really optimal destination for the Super Bowl, as opposed to a process where you may have multiple cities spending significant time and energy around a bid process,” Peter O’Reilly, NFL senior vice president of events, told the Sports Business Journal recently.
The change is expected to result in more Super Bowls being played in traditional, warm-weather sites.
This year’s Super Bowl was awarded to Minneapolis, which built a new stadium for the Vikings. Temperatures here this week have dipped below zero — about 85 degrees colder than the Valley.
“We’re currently focused on Super Bowl 52 in Minnesota, followed by the four games we have ahead of us in Atlanta, Miami, Tampa and Los Angeles,” said Brian McCarthy, an NFL spokesman. “Arizona is a fantastic Super Bowl host that is supported by strong leadership from both the Arizona Cardinals and the local host cities in which Super Bowl events take place. At this time, however, no determination has been made on host cities for Super Bowl 57 and beyond.”
“We’ll be ready to go when they’re ready to accept it,” said Michael Bidwill, Cardinals president. “These bids are hard, (and) they take a lot of effort — the tourist community, the local government, the business community, the public-safety community. All these things take a lot of work by a lot of partners, but they’re worth it when you look at the return to the community (and) the amount of economic impact.”
The NFL has never committed to a specific rotation of cities, but Miami, New Orleans and Los Angeles figure to host regularly.
Arizona and Las Vegas, which is building a new stadium to house the Raiders, are attractive locations, too.
“My guess is they want to get back to some traditional places, especially when you’re sitting in whatever it is — zero degrees, 5 degrees — in ‘Minny,’ ” Bidwill said.