Indianapolis will stage a Super Bowl for the first time after the NFL handed the 2012 event to the city in Indiana.
Fourth cold-weather Super Bowl and first for city of Indianapolis
Indianapolis will stage a Super Bowl for the first time after the NFL handed the 2012 event to the city in Indiana at their annual spring meeting in Atlanta.
It will be the first time the city of Indianapolis and the state of Indiana has hosted the NFL's showpiece event after they beat off competition from Arizona and Houston.
Super Bowl XLVI will be the first cold-weather event since Detroit staged Super Bowl XL, and only three of the 42 Super Bowls have been held indoors - in 1982 and 2006 in Detroit and 1992 in Minneapolis.
The venue will by the new home of the Indianapolis Colts, the Lucas Oil Stadium, which will replace their former home at the nearby RCA Dome for the upcoming season.
The $625 million, 70,000-seater Lucas Oil Stadium has a retractable roof and will stage its first season of NFL action this year.
Deserved
"We have a public/private-funded stadium that is, I believe, the best in the world," Colts owner Jim Irsay said.
"I put $100 million into it and our city $650 million. We have generated an extra $25 million in donations for the league for operating costs.
"Our square footage went from 900 (thousand) in the old place to 1.8 million.
"It is environmentally friendly. I think it sends an important message to teams and cities that if you work together and get new stadiums done and build on long-term relationships that benefit the NFL, that the Super Bowl is a realistic reward for all of that.
"This isn't so much about the Colts. The people of Indianapolis and of Indiana deserve it."
Next year's Super Bowl will be played in Tampa, Florida, followed by Miami in 2010 and the new home stadium for the Dallas Cowboys in North Texas in 2011.
The Colts were Super Bowl champions in 2007 and hope to become the first team in NFL history to win the Super Bowl on their home field.
