Caesars Superdome (originally Louisiana Superdome and formerly Mercedes-Benz Superdome), commonly known as the Superdome, is an indoor stadium in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. It has served as the home venue of the New Orleans Saints of the National Football League (NFL) since its opening in 1975.
Plans to build the Superdome were drawn up in 1967 by the New Orleans modernist architectural firm of Curtis and Davis and the building opened as the Louisiana Superdome in 1975. Its steel frame covers a 13-acre (5.3 ha) expanse and the 273-foot (83 m) dome is made of a lamellar multi-ringed frame and has a diameter of 680 feet (207 m), making it the largest fixed domed structure in the world.
The Superdome has hosted eight Super Bowls (the most of any stadium as of 2025's Super Bowl LIX), and six NCAA championships in men's college basketball. In college football, the Sugar Bowl has been played at the Superdome since 1975, which is one of the "New Year's Six" bowl games of the College Football Playoff and the 2020 National Championship. It also traditionally hosts the Bayou Classic, a rivalry game played between the historically black universities Southern University and Grambling State University. The Superdome was also the long-time home of the Tulane Green Wave football team of Tulane University until 2014 when they returned to Yulman Stadium on their campus, and was the home venue of the New Orleans Jazz of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1975 until 1979.
In 2005, the Superdome housed thousands of people seeking shelter from Hurricane Katrina. The building suffered extensive damage as a result of the storm, and was closed for many months afterward. The building was repaired and reopened in time for the Saints' 2006 home opener on September 25.
Local businessman David Dixon (who later founded the United States Football League in the 1980s) conceived the Superdome while lobbying the NFL to award a franchise to New Orleans. After hosting several exhibition games at Tulane Stadium during typical New Orleans summer thunderstorms, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle told Dixon the NFL would never expand into New Orleans without a domed stadium. Dixon then won the support of the governor of Louisiana, John McKeithen. When they toured the Astrodome in Houston, Texas in 1966, McKeithen said, "I want one of these, only bigger". Bonds were passed for construction of the Superdome on November 8, 1966, seven days after commissioner Pete Rozelle awarded New Orleans the 25th professional football franchise.
The stadium was conceptualized as a multifunctional stadium for football, baseball, and basketball—with movable field level stands arranged specifically for each sport and areas with dirt (for the bases and pitcher's mound) covered with metal plates on the stadium floor (covered by artificial turf during football games)—and there are also meeting rooms that could be rented for many different purposes. Dixon imagined staging side-by-side high school football games and suggested the synthetic surface be white. Blount International of Montgomery, Alabama was chosen to build the stadium.
During construction, various individuals developed eccentric models of the structure: one of sugar, another of pennies. The so-called "penny model" traveled to the Philadelphia Bicentennial '76 exhibition. New Orleanian Norman J. Kientz built the model with 2,697 pennies and donated it to the Superdome Board of Commissioners in April 1974.
It was hoped the stadium would be ready for the 1972 NFL season, and the final cost would come to $46 million. Instead, due to political delays, construction started on August 11, 1971, and finished in August 1975, seven months after Super Bowl IX was scheduled to be played in the stadium. The Super Bowl was played for a third time at Tulane Stadium in January 1975, in cold and rainy conditions. Factoring in inflation, construction delays, and increased transportation costs caused by the 1973 oil crisis, the final price tag skyrocketed to $165 million. Along with the state police, Elward Thomas Brady, Jr., a state representative from Terrebonne Parish conducted an investigation into possible financial irregularities, but the Superdome went forward despite the obstacles.
The New Orleans Saints moved into the Superdome in 1975; the home opener on September 28 was a 21–0 shutout loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in the first regular-season game in the facility. Tulane Stadium, the original home of the Saints, was condemned for destruction on the day the Superdome opened.
The first Super Bowl played in the stadium was Super Bowl XII in January 1978, the first in prime time.
The original artificial turf playing surface in the Superdome was produced and developed by Monsanto (which made the first artificial playing surface for sports, AstroTurf) specifically for the Superdome, and was named "Mardi Grass".
The Superdome replaced the first generation "Mardi Grass" surface with the next-generation infilled FieldTurf midway through the 2003 season, on November 16.
Shelter of last resort during Hurricane Katrina
The Superdome was used as a "shelter of last resort" for those in New Orleans unable to evacuate from Hurricane Katrina when it struck on August 29, 2005. During the storm, a large section of the outer covering was peeled off by high winds. The photos of the damage, in which the concrete underneath was exposed, quickly became an iconic image of Hurricane Katrina. Following the evacuation, the dome remained closed until September 25, 2006.
By August 31, there had been three deaths in the Superdome: two elderly medical patients and a man who was believed to have committed suicide by jumping from the upper-level seats. There were also unconfirmed reports of rape, vandalism, violent assaults, crack dealing and drug abuse, and gang activity inside the Superdome. After a National Guardsman was attacked and shot in the dark by an assailant, the National Guard inside the Superdome used barbed wire barricades to separate themselves from the other people in the dome. On September 11, New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass reported there were "no confirmed reports of any type of sexual assault."
United States Navy sniper Chris Kyle claimed that during the hurricane, he and another sniper climbed to the top of the dome and killed 30 armed looters during the chaos following the event. This claim has never been independently verified, and there is no evidence of dozens of people being slain by a sniper, with commentators noting that it was unlikely 30 people could have been killed without anyone noticing it or reporting it to the media or the police. Kyle's story had been reported in a number of publications, including the New Yorker, with Kyle relating the story to other military personnel.
The Superdome cost $185 million to repair and refurbish. To repair the Superdome, FEMA put up $115 million, the state spent $13 million, the Louisiana Stadium & Exposition District refinanced a bond package to secure $41 million and the NFL contributed $15 million.
After being damaged from the flooding disaster, a new Sportexe Momentum Turf surface was installed for the 2006 season.