It slipped past in a busy news month, but the fourth Super Bowl in Atlanta history appears to be on the way. The NFL and Falcons brass have not confirmed it, but Sports Business Journal reports the league is expected to award Super Bowl LXII, scheduled for February 2028, to Atlanta when team owners meet here later this month. It would be the second Super Bowl played at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
It is not the World Cup, and it is certainly not the Centennial Olympic Games. But anyone who remembers Super Bowl LIII in 2019 — or 1994, or 2000 — knows the game is a genuinely large event for downtown, economically and in terms of global exposure. For the 2019 game, the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce put the windfall at $400 million, a figure others argued was considerably lower. Bars were allowed to operate until 4 a.m. that week, restaurants and hotels filled across the city, and an entire temporary arena went up at Atlantic Station for a Run the Jewels and Foo Fighters concert. Downtown streets were busy for a solid week.
What makes the 2028 date interesting is the downtown that will be waiting for it. February 2028 falls roughly 20 months after the eight World Cup matches Atlanta hosts in June and July 2026, which are themselves the deadline driving most of the construction currently underway around the stadium.
By then, on current timelines, Centennial Yards should have delivered The Mitchell, the 292-key Anthem hotel, and its 8-acre entertainment district anchored by the Cosm dome, with the broader 50-acre project aiming for full completion in 2030. The Center, the former CNN Center, is being remade into dining, retail, and media production space directly between the stadium and State Farm Arena. Georgia State will have spent $107 million on the blocks around Hurt and Woodruff parks. MARTA's Five Points overhaul, restarted after a contentious pause, will be years into a four-year schedule.
That is the real distinction from 2019. Atlanta hosted that Super Bowl with a stadium at the edge of a hole in the ground — the Gulch, still a sunken expanse of rail beds and surface parking. A 2028 game would be the first time the city hosts one with those blocks actually built on, and the first honest test of whether the World Cup construction produced a downtown that holds visitors rather than moving them between venues.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published October 2024.
