5 Reasons Atlanta Is Primed To Host An Incredible Super Bowl

Super Bowl LII will be the third Super Bowl to take place in Atlanta, but it will be the first to be played at the new Mercedes Benz Stadium. I had the chance to tour the venue this past summer, and I was blown away by the sheer magnitude of the building. Atlanta itself has changed immensely since the last time the Super Bowl was held there back in 2000. The actual game between the Rams and Titans couldn’t have been better, but the stage was set for a rough weekend when the city was hit with an ice storm that it was ill-prepared to handle. Back then, Atlanta provided a limited amount of entertainment options for fans, with the highlights – or, rather, lowlights – being strip bars and the spring break scene in Buckhead.

At the time, Atlanta might not have been a great city to host the Super Bowl, but today, that story has changed. Since 2000, the city has seen transformative development in both its midtown and downtown areas. There are spectacular new attractions, like the College Football Hall of Fame, and also well-placed transportation systems, all of which is why Atlanta will play the perfect host to this year’s Super Bowl – even if the event includes fans of the Falcons’ rivals, the New Orleans Saints.

Curated Concerts Featuring Atlanta’s Own

The city was smart enough to bring in one of their own, Grammy Award-winning producer Jermaine Dupri, to produce almost a week’s worth of music concerts leading up to the big game: “(There’s) no city, musically, like Atlanta,” Dupri told Atlanta magazine. “No city has had a run the way that we have for this many years, with this much talent and this many artists. It’s really important to see that the committee paid attention to that.” Giving Dupri the reigns to curate his own shows and put his footprint on this Atlanta Super Bowl bodes extremely well for the fans coming to town for the big game, who will get to live the full Atlanta experience.

Mild Weather

While the weather won’t be like Miami, the 2020 Super Bowl host, it will be a hell of a lot better than it was in Minneapolis last year. The average temperature on February 3 in Atlanta over the past several years has seen a high of 54 with a low of 34, and that is good enough. You can bet that, for people coming from the Northeast, 50 degrees is considered perfectly acceptable golfing weather for February. While it might not be in the 70s or 80s, it will at least be warm enough to feel your fingers while walking around the city, in contrast to how most people felt last year in Minnesota. Then again, in 2000, that winter storm hit the Atlanta area on Super Bowl weekend, leading to car wrecks, travel delays and even disrupting the Saturday practices of both the St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans. I think this year, though, it is safe to say that Atlanta will be better prepared. 

An Accessible Location

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta provides a widely accessible travel destination, which makes a huge difference when you are considering taking a trip to the Super Bowl. It is within a 2-hour flight of 80 percent of the U.S. population. It is also the busiest airport in the world, seeing close to 300,000 passengers a day – meaning that it can handle a Super Bowl crowd. Located 10 miles from Atlanta’s downtown, the airport makes your commute upon landing very easy. It is also home to a Delta airlines terminal, providing more cheap flight options for out-of-towners than many past Super Bowl locations have.

 An Abundance of Quality Accommodations

Hotel space: This isn’t Minneapolis last year, or even Indianapolis in the past, both of which offered a limited amount of hotel rooms. While rates will be much higher than normal – which is typical of Super Bowl cities while hosting – Atlanta has an abundance of adequate hotel space that will keep those prices in check. It’s a major business hub, so the quality of hotels reflect that level of comfort. Of course, a lot of the high rollers all want the best hotels like the Loews or the new Waldorf in Buckhead. The good news is that, since 2000, the city has added thousands of hotel rooms, totaling over 93,000 rooms, many of which cater to the high-end travelers who will attend the Super Bowl. Four Seasons Atlanta and the city’s two Ritz Carlton locations – the only luxury hotels that were operating back in 2000 – have since been joined by others like the St. Regis Atlanta, InterContinental Hotel Atlanta and three W hotels.

A Dazzling New Stadium

Atlanta is now home to the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, a high-tech, fan-oriented facility that is as architecturally striking as it is functional. The geometric arena has the distinction of being the first football stadium in North America to be LEED platinum-certified, and includes a retractable roof that is likely to come in handy for the big game, given Atlanta’s usual evening forecasts for February. “Upon entry and throughout their event experience, our hope is the fans will notice that this building was designed for them,” said the Falcons’ President and CEO, Rich McKay, in a statement. “Every design decision was made from their perspective.” More than a few features of the new stadium – including a 110,000-square-foot fan plaza and the world’s largest LED video board, which spans 360 degrees around the stadium – make good on this promise, and are likely to incite envy among non-Falcons fans on February 3, 2019, and beyond.