After watching New York and New Jersey successfully host a cold-weather Super Bowl in February 2014, the Steelers are now convinced that their city is ready to host the NFL’s biggest game.Team president Art Rooney II announced on Wednesday that the team’s ultimate goal is to have the city of Pittsburgh put in a bid to host Super Bowl LVII, which will be played in February 2023.
“We met this morning with local community leaders to provide an update on formally submitting our application to the NFL to bid for Super Bowl LVII in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania,” Rooney said in a statement. “The application is an early step in the bidding process, and we will continue to meet with representatives of the Mayor’s Office, County Executive’s Office, VisitPittsburgh, Allegheny Conference as well as other community leaders to review the requirements with the hopes of submitting our bid to host Super Bowl LVII in 2023.”
Pittsburgh has actively been looking to add hotel rooms to the city since at least May. The NFL prefers that any team looking to submit a bid has at least 30,000 rooms available.
Formally submitting an application is just the first step in the process of hosting a Super Bowl. Several cities will submit an application, but that application only allows a city a chance to bid on hosting the game.
After reviewing applications, the NFL Super Bowl Committee will select finalists in late 2018 and those finalists will then put in a final bid to host the game. The NFL would then vote on the host of Super Bowl LVII in May 2019.
This same process was used in May when Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans, Tampa Bay and Los Angeles (if it has a team) were named as finalists to host either Super Bowl 53 or 54. The NFL will vote on the host of those two games in May 2016.
The league has already set the location for the next three Super Bowls.
Super Bowl 50 is set to be played on Feb. 7, 2016 in Santa Clara, Calif. Super Bowl LI will be played in Houston in February 2017 and Super Bowl LII will be played in the yet-to-be-completed Vikings stadium in Minnesota in February 2018.
