Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium a spectacular venue for Super Bowl LIII

Opened just 18 months ago, Atlanta’s Mercedes-Brez Stadium is already one of the NFL’s crown jewel facilities.

The NFL opened the building to the media on Tuesday, giving reporters and photographers a sneak peak inside the Super Bowl venue.

“It’s great,” said Eric Finkelstein, NFL Senior Director of Events. “We’re very excited to be here for sure. This is clearly one of the newest facilities in the league and it’s state-of-the-art in every way shape or form.”

The $1.5 billion dollar facility is all set to take center stage this Sunday when it hosts the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII.

“It’s a stunningly beautiful building that you can tell we have ‘Super Bowlized,’ if that’s a word, but just the ability to put our touch on something that is so unique in the world is going to be great match between that and the Super Bowl,” Finkelstein said.

The building is home to the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta United FC of Major League Soccer and college football’s Peach Bowl.

Sunday’s game will mark the first Super Bowl for the city since 2000 when the old Georgia Dome hosted Super Bowl XXXVIII.

Coincidentally, that game, just like this one, featured the Rams.

However, the the team was based in St. Louis at the time and beat the Tennessee Titans 23-16 to win the first and only Super Bowl title in franchise history.

Now, the Rams are back and will be the home team in Atlanta’s new stadium, which is all set to welcome more than 70,000 fans that will pack its seats on Super Bowl Sunday.

“Great building, great staff,” said Ed Mangan, NFL Field Director. “Great people to work with in here, so no real challenges.”

Among its many state-of-the-art features is its revolunary video board.

Measuring about 64,000 square feet, the huge halo shaped screen wraps around the entire facility and is the largest of its kind in the world.

The playing surface is Fieldturf, an artificial grass that is used in many other league stadiums.

“The field is in great shape,” said Mangan. “The stadium here and their staff does an outstanding job on maintaining this facility during the year and we’ve (gone over it) it numerous times and it’s a great surface.”

The stadium’s signature feature is its roof, which sits 305 feet above the field.

The unique retractable structure has been called the most complicated roof design in the history of the world.

It features eight huge petal-shaped panels that each weight 500 tons.

The roof petals can open and close in just a few minutes and mimic a camera shutter during the process.

It’s not known if the roof will be opened or closed on Sunday.

“We’re still monitoring the weather,” said Finkelstein. “That’s really the determining factor as to what we may do with the roof, so it’s all going to be contingent on the weather. It’s temperature. It’s precipitation, those types of things and other elements like that that we’re factoring and since there’s a lot of unknowns and chances of, that’s why we haven’t made a final decision at the moment.”

No matter if the roof is opened or closed, fans inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday are going to be in for a real experience.