Super Bowl 50

Super Bowl 50, the 50th edition of the Super Bowl in American football, and the 46th modern-era National Football League (NFL) championship game, will decide the league champion for the 2015 regular season.

Instead of naming it Super Bowl L with Roman numerals like in previous Super Bowls, this game will be marketed with the Arabic numeral "50." The game is scheduled to be played on February 7, 2016, at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, the home stadium of the San Francisco 49ers. This will be the first Super Bowl held in the San Francisco Bay Area since Super Bowl XIX in January 1985.

It has been dubbed as the Golden Super Bowl because it will be located in the Golden State (California); held in the home stadium of the 49ers, a team named after the miners of the California Gold Rush; and because the 50th anniversary is traditionally the "golden anniversary." CBS will telecast the game in the United States.

Host selection process
In early 2012, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stated that the league planned to make the 50th Super Bowl "spectacular" and that it would be "an important game for us as a league."

Even though the Los Angeles area currently lacks an NFL franchise, Goodell said in 2009 that the game could be held there to mark the fiftieth Super Bowl and to commemorate Super Bowl I, which was held at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. At the time of Goodell's comment, there were proposals to build two stadiums that could have hosted the game: Farmers Field in Downtown Los Angeles (L.A. Live) and Los Angeles Stadium in City of Industry, California. However, neither was scheduled for construction by the time the league announced the finalists for host city. The Rose Bowl in Pasadena and the aforementioned L.A. Coliseum were also discussed as possible host stadiums in the area. The Rose Bowl, despite never having hosted an NFL team, hosted the Super Bowl five times between 1977 and 1993. The NFL has not had a franchise in the city since the 1994 season and has not had a Super Bowl played in the metropolitan area since 1993.

Other than the Los Angeles area, sites included in early discussions or that submitted bids included:


 * AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
 * Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.
 * Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, the new home for the San Francisco 49ers scheduled to open in 2014.
 * Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
 * CenturyLink Field in Seattle, Washington.

The league eventually narrowed the bids to three sites: New Orleans' Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Florida's Sun Life Stadium, and the San Francisco Bay Area's Levi's Stadium.

The league announced on October 16, 2012, that the two finalists were Sun Life Stadium and Levi's Stadium. The South Florida/Miami area has previously hosted the event 10 times (tied for most with New Orleans), with the most recent one being Super Bowl XLIV in 2010. The San Francisco Bay Area last hosted in 1985 (Super Bowl XIX), held at Stanford Stadium in Stanford, California, won by the home team 49ers. The Miami bid depended on whether the stadium underwent renovations. However, on May 3, 2013, the Florida legislature refused to approve the funding plan to pay for the renovations, dealing a significant blow to Miami's chances.

On May 21, 2013, NFL owners at their spring meetings in Boston voted and awarded the game to Levi's Stadium. Sun Life Stadium then became a finalist for Super Bowl LI upon losing the bid to the Bay Area, competing with NRG Stadium (then known as Reliant Stadium) in Houston. However, Houston won the site less than an hour later.

Use of the Arabic numeral
The NFL announced on June 4, 2014, that the game would be marketed with the Arabic numeral "50" instead of the Roman numeral "L." The use of Roman numerals will resume with Super Bowl LI. According to Jaime Weston, the league's vice president of brand and creative, one primary reason for the change was difficulty designing a suitable logo for the game. Despite the league standardizing the Super Bowl logos beginning with Super Bowl XLV so that all would follow the same template, the graphic designers determined that using the template with only the letter "L" would not have been aesthetically pleasing enough. The logo will also differ in that the Arabic numeral "50" will be in large gold numerals behind the logo, with 5 and 0 each on opposite sides of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, instead of underneath and in silver as in the standard logo.