Good news, Miami! The end to our long local nightmare of not hosting a Super Bowl since 2010 is in sight. After a meeting of team owners today, the NFL announced that Miami will host Super Bowl LIV in 2020. The game will mark the 100th anniversary of the league that evolved into the modern NFL.
The 54th edition of the annual championship game will be Miami's 11th time hosting, thus making Miami the most frequent site for the game. New Orleans, which has also hosted ten previous Super Bowls, put in a bid to host the 2019 edition of the game but lost out to Atlanta.
It doesn't take much reading in between the lines however to deduce that the hosting duties were a reward for Dolphins owner Stephen Ross plopping down $450 million of his own money to put a roof on top of the Dolphin's aging 30-year-old stadium.
The NFL has recently used Super Bowl hosting duties as a reward for teams who have recently secured new stadiums.
Super Bowl LIII will be held in Atlanta's still-under-construction Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Super Bowl LII is slated for Minnesota's under-construction U.S. Bank Stadium. The most recent edition of the game was held in San Francisco's two-year-old Levi's Stadium.
In this case, Miami will be rewarded for major upgrades to its old stadium.
In fact, the NFL basically told officials with both the Dolphins and local governments that Miami shouldn't expect any more Super Bowls unless major renovations were made to the Miami Gardens stadium.
Ross at first sought public funding, but that would have required a public vote. The chances of it passing were next-to-nil in a city still reeling from the fallout of the Marlins Park deal.
Instead, Ross agreed to pay for it himself. However, he struck a deal with the county commission to receive "finders fees" for bringing in high-profile events.
Under the agreement, Miami-Dade County will now pay the Dolphins $4 million for landing a Super Bowl.