New Orleans Will Host Super Bowl In 2025 To Avoid Conflict with Mardi Gras

The NFL announced Wednesday that New Orleans will now host the Super Bowl in 2025. The city was originally going to host in 2024, but football's biggest night conflicted with the city's biggest celebration: Mardi Gras.

According to NOLA, a new collective bargaining agreement will extend the NFL's season to 17 games starting in 2021 from its current 16-game season. With the extension, the 2024 Super Bowl would conflict with the second weekend of Mardi Gras.

"Obviously Mardi Gras is an event that takes over that great city and is the pulse of that city in every way during that time," said Peter O'Reilly, the NFL's executive vice president of club business and league events. "And the Super Bowl is quite a spectacle as well, in terms of hotel capacities and events and everything going on down there at the convention center. So it's not practical to have those simultaneously taking place in New Orleans."

The new plan was approved by the 32 NFL clubs during a virtual meeting on Wednesday.

"This isn't our first at bat when it comes to contingency planning," said Jay Cicero, Sports Foundation president and CEO. "The Super Bowl Host Committee, led by the Sports Foundation and the New Orleans Saints, anticipated this possible scenario during the original bid, and we made sure to guarantee that New Orleans would not lost the event all together if the scenario played out."

New Orleans is set to host Super Bowl LIX on February 9, 2025. This will be the 11th time the city has hosted the event and the eighth time it will be played at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. According to ESPN, a new site for the 2024 Super Bowl has not been selected.

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