Super Bowl bid process changes

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Indianapolis wants to host another Super Bowl, but it faces an important change in the bid process.

The head of the Indianapolis 2018 Super Bowl Bid working committee spent the weekend in New Orleans and found out, from now on, the NFL will have to invite a city to bid before it can.  

Super Bowl Host Committee CEO Alisson Melangton says this time, Indianapolis and any city hoping to host Super Bowl must first submit intent to bid with the NFL. The filing deadline is August. 

The NFL will then decide if that city will be invited to place an actual bid, which, in the case of the 2018 Super Bowl, would be due in May 2014. New Orleans will be bidding against Indianapolis along with several other cities.

“It’s definitely going to be competitive,” Melangton said. “I know we got a lot of accolades and we felt like we did a great job. We had no large hiccups in our plan. But it's still going to be competitive. We won’t know who we are competing against until October.”

Melangton says the toughest challenge facing Indianapolis is the fact that it’s a cold weather city. She said the NFL is not likely to award the Super Bowl to cold weather cities without several years of warm weather Super Bowls in between.

Melangton says she still expects Indianapolis to bid on the 2018 Super Bowl. The only way the city would not bid is if it didn’t think it could win against competing cities, she said.

Mayor Greg Ballard says he's confident  "Indy will nail it again," if we get another Super Bowl

But, he told 24-Hour-News 8 Anchor Eric Halvorson: it will be challenging. 

“We don't want to re-create what we did.  I think we have to come up with a whole new game plan,” Ballard said, “a whole new way of looking at it. And be inventive, once again."

That means attractions such as the Zip Line might not be back in 2018.  But, the Mayor said, “I'm sure they'd use Georgia Street again because that's why it was designed -- to be for that sort of thing."

Strong competition is likely to come from Minneapolis and San Francisco -- since both cities will be eager to show-off their new stadiums to a Super Bowl audience.

The then-new Lucas Oil Stadium helped Indianapolis win the battle for Super Bowl XLVI in 2012.