Miami Loses Both Super Bowl L and LI Bids

This had been pretty much all but guaranteed after the Dolphin's aggressive plans to secure public money to renovate Sun Life Stadium fell through, but now it's official. Miami has lost both its bid to host the historic 50th anniversary Super Bowl and the follow up, Super Bowl LI. They'll...

By Kyle Munzenrieder

May 21, 2013

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This had been pretty much all but guaranteed after the Dolphin's aggressive plans to secure public money to renovate Sun Life Stadium fell through, but now it's official. Miami has lost both its bid to host the historic 50th anniversary Super Bowl and the follow up, Super Bowl LI. They'll be hosted by San Francisco and Houston respectively.

Miami's Sun Life was in direct competition to host Super Bowl L with San Francisco's as-yet-incomplete Levi's Stadium, which is set to open as the new home of the 49ers in 2014.

In the early run, it seemed NFL owners had wanted to host the milestone game in Miami to reflect the Super Bowl's heritage (Miami has hosted a total of 10). In fact, The New York Times reports, "Miami would almost certainly have won the bidding for it had a referendum on use of tax dollars and rebates to pay for stadium renovations passed." But the renovation scheme's failure and San Francisco's aggressive bid spelled doom.

As the loser, Miami then went on to face Houston to host Super Bowl LI, but NFL owners didn't even decide to give us the conciliation prize. Reliant Stadium will instead host its second game. Its bid included a promise to build the largest digital display of any sports arena in the world.

It appears NFL owners are easily persuaded by shiny new toys.

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