Wondering where is the Super Bowl this year? On February 11, 2024, Super Bowl LVIII will see the NFC and the AFC champion teams go head to head at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. It may be the 58th Super Bowl, but it’s a first in a lot of other ways. The first Super Bowl was a matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs in Los Angeles Memorial Stadium in 1966. The Packers won 35 to 10 in front of a crowd of just under 62,000. It was originally a game that the National Football League and its rival, the American Football League, agreed upon to see who’d come out on top if the champions of their respective organizations faced off. Not long after the first Super Bowl, though, the AFL merged with the NFL, with the AFL teams forming the newly expanded NFL’s American Football Conference and the NFL teams becoming the organization’s National Football Conference.
In the beginning, the game was known—more prosaically—as the AFL-NFL Championship Game. The first time the Super Bowl moniker was used for the game was in 1969 for Super Bowl III. (The underdog New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts 16 to 7 at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida, in what’s still considered one of the greatest upsets in football history.)
Determined to come up with a snazzier title for the most important football game of the year, AFL founder and Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt dreamed up the name after noticing a toy called a Super Ball. Since then, the term Super Bowl has been applied retroactively to the two first Super Bowl games.
The Super Bowl is now held on the second Sunday in February. It had previously been tradition to play the game on the first Sunday of February, but it to be moved back a week after the NFL added a regular-season game in 2021.
Who is playing in the Super Bowl?
Panthers versus Dolphins? Denver Broncos or Baltimore Ravens versus the Indianapolis Colts? Boston Patriots versus the Dallas Cowboys?
We don’t know yet—that’ll be determined during the playoffs, which will start with the wild card rounds on January 13 and culminate in the NFC and AFC championship games on January 28 (at 3 p.m. Eastern Time for the AFC on CBS and at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time for the NFC on Fox).
Where can I watch Super Bowl LVIII, and when is kickoff time?
Game day for Super Bowl LVIII is February 11, 2024. Kickoff is at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
In the US, Super Bowl LVIII will be broadcast on CBS, Nickelodeon and Univision. It will also be streamed on Paramount+.
Why is this Super Bowl location special?
This is the first time Las Vegas (or Nevada) has ever hosted a Super Bowl. Sin City has poured tens of millions into hosting this Super Bowl alone, but it’s been part of an even larger strategy to turn Las Vegas into a sports paradise, including shutting down the Las Vegas Strip for days to host Formula 1 races, and wooing Oakland’s remaining professional sports team, the Oakland Athletics, to make the same move the former Oakland Raiders made in 2020. (The A’s are slated to move into the new baseball stadium Las Vegas is building for them in 2028. Oakland must hate Las Vegas.)
What’s special about Allegiant Stadium?
Besides being the home stadium of the Las Vegas Raiders, the 1.8-million-square-foot, 10-story Allegiant Stadium is—along with SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California—one of the two newest stadiums in the NFL.
Allegiant Stadium opened its doors in 2020 and features a translucent ETFE, cable truss roof, and gigantic side windows that open up onto the Las Vegas Strip. The stadium seats 65,000 (but can be expanded up to 71,835), cost $1.9 billion to construct (only SoFi Stadium, at $5.5 billion, is a more expensive stadium anywhere in the world), and houses an 85-foot torch in honor of deceased Raiders owner Al Davis. (It’s also the largest 3D-printed object in the world.)
The British Arup Group, which designed Allegiant Stadium, calls it the most quickly designed and constructed American football stadium of its size—it took 40 months from concept to ribbon-cutting.
It’s also unusual in that it has a natural-grass surface that’s actually rolled outside of the stadium when the Raiders aren’t playing, allowing the grass to bask in natural light. (You can watch a video of the natural-grass tray being rolled inside here.) Allegiant Stadium also has an artificial-turf field for college football games—it’s rolled up and stored under the stadium when it’s not needed. (State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, has a similar roll-out, roll-in natural-grass field.)
Besides football, Allegiant Stadium has also been used for Major League Soccer and international soccer matches, concerts for the likes of BTS, the Rolling Stones and Beyoncé, the Academy of Country Music Awards, and more. It’s the biggest entertainment venue in the city.
Where is Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas?
Allegiant Stadium is right in the heart of Las Vegas, less than a mile—or about two long blocks—from Las Vegas Boulevard (the street most people know best for the Las Vegas Strip) and just over the Hacienda Avenue bridge from the back of the Mandalay Bay.
For the actual event, Las Vegas will shut down motor traffic to Allegiant Stadium from the Las Vegas Strip, including along the Hacienda Avenue bridge. The route will be temporarily dedicated to pedestrian traffic going to and from the game. About 65,000 fans are expected to attend Super Bowl LVIII in person, and about a third of those will walk to Allegiant Stadium via the bridge.
How are Super Bowl locations decided?
Super Bowl locations are usually determined three to six years before the actual game.
Historically, potential host cities had to put together time-consuming and extensive bids to become home of the next Super Bowl game, with the NFL team owners voting on which bid they liked best.
In recent years, however, it’s less formal: The NFL gets a sense of which NFL team owners want to host the Super Bowl in question (the host city must have an NFL team), then comes to a consensus with all the owners about who the host will be. Factors include stadium size and amenities, the ability to host ancillary Super Bowl events, the number of hotel rooms in the host city, how long it’s been since a city hosted the Super Bowl, and local partnerships and community support.
Another big factor is the weather in February (sorry, Buffalo and Minnesota), which is a big reason why cities like Miami, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Tampa have hosted more than you’d normally expect.
Where was the last Super Bowl held?
Super Bowl LVII took place at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on February 12, 2023, and saw the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles 38 to 35. Fox’s broadcast of the game was the most-watched television program in American history, peaking at over 118 million viewers for Rihanna’s halftime show. Worldwide, only the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landings scored higher viewership.
Where will future Super Bowls be held?
The NFL has already announced the sites of the next three Super Bowls. Here’s what we know so far:
Super Bowl LIX will be held at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, on February 9, 2025. The New Orleans Saints call the Caesars Superdome home.
Super Bowl LX will be in Santa Clara, California, at Levi’s Stadium on February 8, 2026. That’s the home stadium of the San Francisco 49ers.
Super Bowl LXI will be in Inglewood, California, at SoFi Stadium on Valentine’s Day—February 14, 2027. It’s the home stadium for both the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers. It’s also where college football’s NCAA Division I LA Bowl is held every year.
Who’s performing the halftime show?
R&B singer Usher will be performing the Super Bowl halftime show, which, for some people, has become a bigger draw than the game itself.
It’s not his first Super Bowl performance, though—Usher made a two-minute appearance to sing “OMG” for the halftime show at Super Bowl XLV in 2011 at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. (The Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 31 to 25.) The Black Eyed Peas were the headliners for that show.
This will be Usher’s first time as the headliner of a Super Bowl halftime show. He’s widely expected to released a new album, Coming Home, that day as well.
Why does everyone keep calling the Super Bowl “the big game”?
Well, it is a very big game, as you can tell by 2023’s viewing numbers alone. But the real reason so many non-NFL companies keep referring to the Super Bowl as the big game in advertisements for buffalo wing deliveries, big-screen TVs, or what have you, is that the NFL is notoriously protective of its trademark for the name Super Bowl. By calling the Super Bowl the big game in their commercials and other commerce-related communications, those companies are avoiding get slapped with a trademark-infringement lawsuit from the NFL.
Will Taylor Swift be at Super Bowl LVIII?
It’s unlikely, but still possible. Even if the Kansas City Chiefs (for whom Taylor Swift’s beau, Travis Kelce, plays tight end) made it to the big game, she’ll have just wrapped up a Tokyo performance of her Eras Tour the previous night.
Theoretically, however, if the Chiefs made it to Allegiant Stadium and Swift quickly hopped on a personal jet (which, of course, she can easily afford) after the Tokyo show for the 14-hour flight to Nevada, she could make the Super Bowl LVIII in person, though probably severely jet-lagged.
All that, of course, also assumes that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are still dating by then.
What happens after the Super Bowl?
The players celebrate, Walt Disney World cuts a new commercial, and then the NFL draft starts on April 25, 2024, in Detroit, Michigan, initiating the march to the next Super Bowl all over again.
