The College Football Playoff is negotiating with Atlanta officials to have the city replace Las Vegas as host of the 2025 College Football Playoff national title game, sources told Action Network.
Once finalized, Atlanta will host the College Football Playoff National Championship on Jan. 6, 2025, and Miami will take over on Jan. 5, 2026, sources said.
In January, Action Network first reported Las Vegas would host the 2025 title game and Miami the 2026 title game. However, Las Vegas and the CFP couldn’t resolve a conflict with the annual Consumer Electronics Show, also held in early January. The CES, which draws nearly 200,000 visitors to Las Vegas, requires thousands of hotel rooms and convention room space.
“There was a request to move CES a week, which wasn’t happening, and Las Vegas asked the CFP to move the title game back a week later,” a source said. “But there was no dice there either.”
With the CFP in a bind to replace Las Vegas, Atlanta emerged as the choice to host the 2025 game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Atlanta and Miami will become the only cities to host two College Football Playoff title games during the CFP’s original 12-year contract. Atlanta also hosted the fourth CFP title game in 2018.
While Atlanta was sought as a late replacement for Las Vegas, Miami is being rewarded with a second title game because of the financial hardships it incurred during the 2020 COVID-19 season, sources said. That season, the title game attendance was limited to 20% capacity because of COVID-19.
There are only four years remaining on the CFP’s original 12-year contract. This year’s title game will be played in Los Angeles (Jan. 9, 2023), followed by Houston (Jan. 8, 2024), Atlanta (Jan. 6, 2025) and Miami (Jan. 5, 2026).
Although the next playoff contract has yet to be determined, Las Vegas is the favorite to host the 2027 CFP title game, sources said.
While any decisions are at least a year away for a new College Football Playoff format and schedule beginning in 2027, there's already concern among college officials about the diminishing available dates for future playoff games, sources said.
The NFL announced its playoffs would begin with Super Wild Card Weekend, with multiple games Saturday and Sunday and one game Monday night in the second week of January.
Those dates would be the potential dates for the title game in an expanded College Football Playoff.
However, with the NFL already taking those dates, it will make finding available dates for an expanded playoff much more difficult, sources said. That’s because the CFP will not play any games opposite NFL games.
