Tampa Bay wins rights to host 2029 college football national championship

It’s a few years away, but those involved say they couldn’t wait to confirm that the College Football Playoff’s national championship game will once again be played in “Champa Bay” come 2029. 

Rich Clark, executive director of the College Football Playoff, made the announcement Wednesday morning from a fully CFP-branded Raymond James Stadium, the championship trophy and Tampa Bay Buccaneer Hall of Famer Derrick Brooks in tow. The stadium will host the college championship game for the second time on Jan. 22, 2029. 

Tampa was the first city in the Southeast to host the championship game back in 2017, when Clemson beat Alabama 35 to 31 in front of an overflow crowd of 74,512 fans, according to Visit Tampa Bay. Raymond James Stadium was built to seat 65,667. 

“Your game here in 2017 was just off the charts,” Clark told the press during Wednesday’s announcement. “Tampa is an uncommon city, and when I say uncommon I mean that in the best of ways. You are extraordinary. You are one of a kind and you are our No. 1 choice.”

By the time the playoffs come back to town Tampa will be a very different city than the one that played host in 2017, CEO of Visit Tampa Bay Santiago Corrada says. 

By 2029, construction on the final leg of the Tampa Riverwalk should be complete, creating a continuous, 12.2-mile paved pathway along both the eastern and western banks of the Hillsborough River. The city’s downtown area now includes two new dining and entertainment districts — Midtown and Water Street — and by 2029, visitors may also be able to explore the developing Gasworx district in Ybor Harbor. 

“Just like the College Football National Championship has evolved — it now has a playoff game that it didn’t have back in 2017 — this city has just developed in an incredible way,” Corrada says. “You can take many of our lessons to other cities, but what you can’t have is our people and it’s that unity, that spirit of collaboration and cooperation and friendliness, that makes it so easy for me now to sell this city across the globe. What we have here is truly uncommon, truly special.”

Hosting the championship has proven to be a good investment for the city in the past.

Visit Tampa Bay calculated that the economic impact of hosting the 2017 College Football Playoffs, along with the accompanying parties, concerts and fan fests, was roughly $273.6 million. That includes $120 million in direct spending, according to the tourism bureau.

Beyond the economic boost that comes with hosting a national championship, Tampa has also seen how 2017’s event created a lasting impact in the community, with extensive volunteer efforts and educational legacy programs, Brooks says. The College Football Playoff Foundation and its “Extra Yard for Teachers” initiative invested more than $1 million into educational programs throughout the city, benefiting schools like Brooks-DeBartolo Collegiate high school, a public charter school founded by Brooks and former San Francisco 49ers owner Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. 

“Seeing our teachers be rewarded for their hard work, and seeing how excited students were to see those College Football Banners in the school gym, in my mind, gave our students extra inspiration to go to college and see college as a real next step and not just a dream,” Brooks says. 

One of the cities under consideration early on for the locality that would host the 2029 championship was Dallas.

The CFP group in charge of the search was in talks with several as part of the vetting process, when Dallas decided to back out. 

"Part of what we use in our criteria is timing. Is it a good time for a city to host or not?" says Clark.

"So we may be interested in a city, but if the city determines that it has other things going on, then maybe the timing is not good and we can consider them at a later date. That happens and not really, I would say, uncommon."

City officials and staff at Raymond James Stadium have lots of practice hosting national sporting events. Tampa has staged five Super Bowls, four NCAA Women’s Final Four championships, three NCAA Frozen Four hockey championships and three NCAA men’s basketball tournaments, with the city slated to host again in 2026.

“We are not called Champa Bay for no reason,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor says. “We’re Champa Bay because everyone here is a champion, and we come together to make sure we show the rest of the world.”

This year’s championship game will be played in Miami Gardens’ Hard Rock Stadium, the organization says. Las Vegas will host the event in 2027, followed by New Orleans in 2028.