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Super Bowl LII has been awarded to the city of Minnesota, who will now host the NFL's championship game in 2018.
New Orleans has hosted 10 Super Bowls and has never had a bid rejected. Minneapolis will have a new $1 billion indoor stadium built by 2018.
"We think that's good luck. We'll set the standard," said Minnesota bid committee co-chair Marilyn Carlson Nelson. "First or last would be better than being in the middle. Everybody's a little fresher. You're listening to stories. I hope ours is going to knock their socks off."
The three cities were campaigning for the NFL’s championship game during league meetings in Atlanta this week. New Orleans has been home to the Super Bowl 10 previous times, while Indianapolis and Minneapolis have each hosted it once.
A three-quarters majority vote of the NFL’s 32 owners was required for a city to win the bid.
"The real thing is to have a superior knowledge of the event," Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation president Jay Cicero said. "So when you read something in a bid, you know exactly what it is. And you have to be able to respond. There's 1,000 things in a bid. Find a creative way to deliver it or find a way to replace something you can't deliver with something as valuable or more valuable."
Indianapolis was making a bid to host it's second Super Bowl in the recently-built Lucas Oil Stadium, but ultimately failed to garner the necessary votes.
"I really feel that we did an incredible job the first time," Colts owner Jim Irsay said. "We had things like the Super Bowl village that was copied. So we're really unique in Indianapolis. We can't guarantee the same weather, but we're going to try. ... So I really think we deserve a second Super Bowl and that we've earned it. I'm really just going to speak from the heart to the fellow owners."
It's certainly been a great offseason for the city of Minnesota. After hiring one of the hottest NFL coordinators in Mike Zimmer to become their next head coach, they followed that up with a great draft class in which they nabbed arguably the best QB prospect in Teddy Bridgewater.