Super Bowl 2021 awarded to Los Angeles

CHARLOTTE >> The Rams and the National Football League brought professional football back to Los Angeles last January, correcting a 23-year mistake that left the second-biggest market in the country without a team from the most popular sports league in North America.

Now the Super Bowl is coming back to the City of Angels, too.

That didn’t take long, did it?

In a sweeping vote by NFL owners on Tuesday in Charlotte, Los Angeles was awarded hosting duties for Super Bowl LV in 2021. The game will be played at the privately funded $2.6 billion stadium being built by Rams owner Stan Kroenke at the sports and entertainment hub he is constructing in Inglewood.

It will be the first Los Angeles area Super Bowl since Super Bowl XXVIII in Pasadena in 1993, and eighth overall.

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The NFL also decided on host sites for Super Bowl LIII (2019) and LV (2019) with Atlanta getting the nod for 2019 and South Florida for 2020.

L.A. joined Atlanta, South Florida and Tampa on the ballots for Super Bowls LIV and LV, while New Orleans, Atlanta, South Florida and Tampa made up the ballot for Super Bowl LIII.

Los Angeles has historically been a mainstay in the Super Bowl hosting business since the game’s inception in 1967, which was played at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum.

But when the Rams and Raiders left L.A. In 1994 for St. Louis and Oakland, it effectively removed the region from Super Bowl consideration.

The Rams retu home put Los Angeles back on the Super Bowl map.

In fact, competing bidders from Atlanta, South Florida and Tampa Bay were informed a year ago Los Angeles would be under consideration for Super Bowl’s LIII and LV, and that was before owners decided what team would retu to L.A. and what stadium they’d call home.

At this time last year, the Rams were angling to relocate from St. Louis to Los Angeles – to eventually play at Kroenke’s stadium in Inglewood – while the Raiders and San Diego Chargers jointly proposed a shared stadium in Carson.

It would take seven months before the NFL sorted out that puzzle, with owners eventually siding with the Rams’ Inglewood proposal with a second spot open to either the Chargers or Raiders depending on their local stadium efforts.

But it tells you a little bit about how the NFL valued L.A. as a Super Bowl site that they put it on the ballot well before deciding the pertinent who, when and what stadium details.

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And from the moment Kroenke and the Rams were given the green light to come back home, the wheels were put in motion to christen the retu with a Super Bowl.

The culmination of which was realized in Charlotte on Tuesday, with Wasserman Media Group CEO Casey Wasserman and LA84 Foundation president Renata Simril delivering a 15-minute pitch on behalf of Los Angeles that emphasized the sparkling state-of-the art Inglewood venue, the modeization and diversification of L.A. since the NFL last called it home, ample hotel space to embrace thousands of out-of-town fans and media members, and L.A.’s ability to accommodate and deliver a spectacular platform to showcase the biggest sporting event in the world.

That message - and the NFL’s desire to retu the Super Bowl to the city that gave it birth – resonated with the league’s 32 owners.

“The selection of the Inglewood stadium for the 2021 Superbowl is the exclamation point of 5 years of amazing progress for the City,” said Inglewood Mayor James Butts. “We look forward to being the host of the largest sporting event of 2021.”