Could Chicago Host A Super Bowl?

The Super Bowl has been traditionally been held in warm weather tourist destinations. It’s been helded in Florida 15 times (Miami 10, Tampa 4, and Jacksonville 1) and in Southern California 10 times (LA 7 and San Diego 3). The Super Bowl has occasionally worked its way north, but always in a domed stadium like in Minneapolis, Detroit and Indianapolis. Until 2014 at least when the Super Bowl will be held in MetLife Stadium, home of the NY Jets and NY Giants, in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was in Chicago this week alongside Mayor Rahm Emanuel at Soldier Field to recognize the stadium for becoming a LEED-certified building, which means it is environmentally friendly. Goodell was asked about the possibility of Chicago possibly hosting a future Super Bowl, the largest US city that hasn’t hosted a Super Bowl yet.

"“We did speak about this earlier,” Goodell said. “We are, as you know, hosting a Super Bowl in New York in an open-air stadium in 2014, and we’re excited about that. We think it’s going to be a great thing for our fans and a great thing for New York.”“I think if we can do it successfully there, and I think that opens up doors where we’ll be looking at. Obviously, you know how to host great events. … And you’ve got a great stadium.”"

Obvious reasons to not host a Super Bowl in Chicago are it’s notorious winter weather and storms. A lesser known reason might be that Soldier Field only can hold 63,500 fans.

"“I think the commissioner said something which is really, really important,” Emanuel said. “The first step is to host something in New York, which is an open stadium.”“The most important thing now is having a great stadium and a city that can have the infrastructure to host the hundreds of thousands of people that come in,” he said."

Emanuel used the recent NATO conference held in Chicago as an example of the city’s ability to host a large event. The city successfully welcomed world leaders with out incident and thinks Chicago would be an ideal city to host a Super Bowl.

Chicago is the third largest city in the United States and has the 4th largest gross domestic product in the world. There are plenty of hotels, tourist destinations and sight seeing in Chicago.

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