National Football League owners will announce on Tuesday whether the San Francisco area or South Florida will be the host for Super Bowl 50 in 2016 and decide the game’s 2017 host as well.
Off-season meetings began on Monday with owners looking at putting the championship-game spectacle in a new $1.2 billion stadium in Santa Clara, California, that the San Francisco 49ers will call home starting in 2014.
Owners will be asked to bring the Super Bowl to California, where the first Super Bowl was staged in Los Angeles in 1967, or the South Florida, which has hosted the game 10 times, most recently in 2010.
Whichever bid loses for 2016 in Tuesday’s first vote of the 32 club owners will compete against Houston for the chance to host the 2017 Super Bowl. Houston has hosted the game in 1974 and 2004.
A setback for the South Florida bid came earlier this month when state lawmakers denied taxpayer funding for stadium upgrades.
The San Francisco area’s only time to host the Super Bowl was in 1985 at Stanford Stadium, which was destroyed and replaced with a new stadium in 2006.
No California city has hosted the Super Bowl since San Diego in 2003.
Next year’s Super Bowl will be staged in suburban New York, the first Super Bowl to be staged in a cold weather city without the protection of a domed stadium. The 2015 Super Bowl will be in suburban Phoenix, Arizona.
Future Super Bowl sites on agenda at league meeting
