Ram Digest

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell Expects SoFi Stadium to be a 'Regular Super Bowl Stop'

SoFi Stadium could be getting another Super Bowl in the year's ahead sooner rather than later.

Nicholas Cothrel

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LOS ANGELES – This year's Super Bowl will take place at SoFi Stadium inside the Rams' newly opened state-of-the-art venue. It marks Los Angeles' first Super Bowl since 1993, breaking a stretch of almost three decades.

L.A. went without an NFL team for 22 years, putting a damper on the overall football fandom of the city, as they sat without a home team to actively root for.

Following the Rams' return to L.A. in 2016 and the Chargers' arrival in 2017, the market now has two NFL teams for the taking. As the Rams and Chargers call L.A. home, both fanbases have begun to ascend year-over-year.

On Wednesday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell held his annual press conference ahead of the Super Bowl and he spoke about the outlook of what the teams in the L.A. market, combined with the facility of SoFi Stadium, has done for the growth of the sport in an area of the country that missed professional football for nearly a generation.

As the NFL sits halfway through the 2022 Super Bowl week, they believe this won't be the only time Los Angeles and SoFi Stadium host the championship event in years to come.

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“It’s sort of great that we’re sitting here with the backdrop of the stadium and the media center,” Goodell said Wednesday. “It did come with a lot of ups and downs. Losing two teams from the NFL in the 1990s was a difficult period for us and our fans. I think it’s something we worked really hard to resolve, but we really wanted to find the right solution. One of the things I’m really confident about sitting here, and feeling it this week, is that we really landed in the right spot. We have a state-of-the-art stadium that I think reflects this great community in the entertainment capital of the world. It now has two NFL teams playing here, which I think has been extraordinarily successful in reestablishing two teams here. Then, we have what I think is really the ultimate event, which is the Super Bowl, here. To me, it’s sort of surreal that we’re here in many ways after all these years — 29 years since we had the last Super Bowl (in Los Angeles).

“I think this is going to be a regular Super Bowl stop, because of that stadium. It really started with the stadium. We needed to have a state-of-the-art stadium that gave us the ‘wow factor,’ that gave us the ability to put on these events and frankly attract other events other than the Super Bowl. We don’t have a Super Bowl until LV. That would be the earliest we would consider L.A., but I would be hard-pressed to think that they’re not going to be at the top of everybody’s list every opportunity we can.”

Goodell's comments suggest that following the scheduled cities that are already on the books for future Super Bowls, L.A. could get back in line to host the event yet again in years down the road.

The NFL has the next three Super Bowls already set in place, featuring Arizona next season, Las Vegas in 2024 and New Orleans in 2025.

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Nick Cothrel is the publisher of Ram Digest. Follow Nick and Ram Digest on Twitter @NickCothrel & @RamDigestSI for more Rams coverage.

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Nicholas Cothrel
NICHOLAS COTHREL

Nick Cothrel covers the Los Angeles Rams for Sports Illustrated.

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