NFL Could Be Moving Pro Bowl To Orlando, Other Cities Still In Play

Update:

The league office tells Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk that no official decision has been made regarding the Pro Bowl as of now, and there are still other cities in the running.

• Smith adds that these cities include: Honolulu, Houston, and Sydney, Australia.

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Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg News reports that the NFL will be relocating the Pro Bowl from Honolulu to Orlando.

• Soshnick adds that other citing including Honolulu, Houston and Sydney also expressed interest in hosting the event.

This doesn’t come as a complete surprising, considering that Orlando was previously mentioned as a new host city for the event.

The Pro Bowl has come under criticism in recent years from fans, the media and even NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

A few months ago, Goodell said he was “disappointed” in the Pro Bowl, as it didn’t meet their standards.

“I’m not gonna speculate on where the Pro Bowl is going but I was disappointed in what I saw on Sunday,” Goodell said. “I had raised this issue three or four years ago. We worked with a number of players to make changes in the game. They had a positive impact, at least in the short term. But I didn’t see that this past week.

“I think our biggest standard has to be what we expect from the NFL and what our fans expect from the NFL. If it’s not quality, it’s not a real competition that we can be proud of, we have to do something different. That’s my number one priority right now. I’m open to new ideas, I’m open to how we do it, but it’s not the kind of game that I think we want to continue to have in its current format, based on what we saw last week.“

The NFL has tried to change up the format for the Pro Bowl by adding a fantasy draft selection, but it has done little in terms of the rating, which have been down for the past three years in a row.

We’ll have more regarding changes to the Pro Bowl as the news is available.