In contrast to previous Super Bowl bidding processes, no bids were accepted for Super Bowl LVI. The bids for Super Bowl LIII, Super Bowl LIV and Super Bowl LV were all drawn from the same pool of candidates in a meeting on May 24, 2016. Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, and Tampa Bay were the four candidates for the three contests; Atlanta received Super Bowl LIII, Miami received Super Bowl LIV, and Los Angeles was granted Super Bowl LV. On May 18, 2017, authorities announced that the stadium opening, originally scheduled for the start of the 2019 season, had been delayed an additional year to 2020. At the league's owners meetings in Chicago on May 23, 2017, the league re-awarded Super Bowl LV to the lone remaining candidate, Tampa Bay, and awarded Super Bowl LVI to Los Angeles.
Broadcasting
Under the NFL's current television contracts, Super Bowl LVI was to have been broadcast by CBS, as part of the annual cycle among the three main broadcast television partners of the NFL. For the first time, the Super Bowl is tentatively scheduled on a date that falls with an ongoing Olympic Games, as the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing will begin on February 4, the Friday prior to the game. Fellow NFL broadcaster NBC holds the broadcast rights to the Olympics, and primetime coverage of the Games on that night, if any, would have had to compete with the Super Bowl—potentially diluting viewership and advertising revenue for both events. To maximize U.S. viewership and provide value to NBC's rights, marquee events in recent Games have sometimes been deliberately scheduled to allow live broadcasts in North American primetime hours whenever feasible. There is also an unsaid gentleman's agreement between the NFL's broadcasters to not air competing original programming against the Super Bowl. On March 13, 2019, CBS announced that it had agreed to trade Super Bowl LVI with NBC in exchange for Super Bowl LV, thus both Super Bowl LVI and the 2022 Winter Olympics will be televised by NBC. As with Super Bowl LII, which fell prior to the 2018 Winter Olympics, NBC will be able to maximize its advertising revenue by encouraging sponsors to buy time for both events; the network estimated it would take in a combined $1.4 billion from advertising sales for the two events in 2018. CBS will also be able to follow up its Super Bowl with another high-profile sporting event it will broadcast in 2021, the NCAA Final Four, to which the network holds the rights only in odd-numbered years. This led critics to suggest that the NFL had become willing to break the traditional Super Bowl rotation if it can be used to bolster other major sporting events a network airs afterwards.
