With the announcement last week that the NFL is considering holding its championship game overseas in London other international cities have begun to show interest in hosting America's most popular sporting event.
The Super Bowl has never been held outside of the United States and, if it happens, the two most logical host cities should be, taking into account the time difference issue, either Toronto or Mexico City. So many fans and players were surprised, to say the least, at London being named a leading candidate for the game. (Hmmm, February in London or Miami?)
The NFL has hinted that the first international Super Bowl would be held in an English or Spanish-speaking city. The league, therefore, has politely turned down significant interest from Dubai, Paris, Beijing, Stockholm, Tokyo, Reykjavik and Perth.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, however, has now indirectly reentered the picture as a possible host city for the Super Bowl. The city, which has profited enormously from UAE's oil reserves, has publicly stated it will buy any city that is awarded the game, dismantle the city, transport the city and reassemble the city in Dubai to host the Super Bowl.
After the game concludes Dubai will also cover the cost of returning the city to its original country. This is a herculean effort to host a 60-minute sporting event.
"If it happens to be London then ... we will buy London, then move London here to host the Super Bowl," said Said Adem, a Dubai sports and recreation department official. "We have indoor skiing for Pete's sake. I think we can pack up and move an entire city."
"There's nothing we can do about it," said NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell. "We have to go to where the host city is at the scheduled time of the game."
Last month Dubai began constructing Super Bowl Island in the shape of the Vince Lombardi Trophy in the warm Persian Gulf waters just off the coast adjacent to The Palm Dubai islands (pictured above). The $12 billion project was meant to show NFL executives that Dubai was, in fact, serious about hosting the game.
The island--actually a series of over 250 smaller islands--will include an 85,000-seat stadium and one medium-sized rental villa for each fan attending the game. The islands will all be lined with beaches containing only the highest quality sand. Each grain will be hand picked and trucked one-grain-at-a-time from UAE's deserts to the project site. During transport each grain will be engraved with an NFL factoid, which fans can read using Super Bowl Island's beach microscopes.
(Three years ago Dubai attempted to host an NFL preseason game and created a small island named: NFL Preseason Game Island. The NFL was not impressed, even by the island's 65,000-seat stadium built solely for an NFL preseason game. The league chose not to hold a game in UAE and Dubai later apologized saying that "it really was a very small island.")
The earliest an international Super Bowl could be held is 2013, as each American venue to hold the game has been chosen through 2012. Dubai has made it clear that, should Super Bowl Island be completed before 2013, that it would not purchase and relocate an American city "out of respect for the game."
"In 2012 the Super Bowl is in Indianapolis and [Dubai Sports Managers] all agreed that even though [Indianapolis] is a smaller city, thus making relocation easier, we would not buy it and move it here," said Adem.
Dubai's sports and recreation department along with Dubai Sports Managers--a group that brings sporting events to the city--are very optimistic that the rapidly growing metropolis will one day welcome an NFL Championship game.
"Oh, we'll definitely be hosting the game sometime soon," said Adem. "The real question is what city will we also be hosting?"
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