The New Orleans Saints have sold out the 70,000-seat Louisiana Superdome on a season-ticket basis for a fourth straight year.

Saints vice president of ticket and suite sales Mike Stanfield says team officials weren’t sure what to expect because of the national recession, but found no lack of demand. Stanfield says the waiting list for Saints season tickets continues to grow and is now more than 50,000.

Via Saints Beat

When NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced Tuesday that New Orleans was back in the business of hosting Super Bowls, the contingent of sports executives and business leaders who had worked for the past year to snag the country’s premier sports event hugged, smiled and congratulated one another.

Saints owner Tom Benson did them all one better: He leaped about “four feet” in the air.

New Orleans hasn’t hosted the championship game since 2002, when the New England Patriots defeated the St. Louis Rams on a last-second field goal.

Ever since the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation submitted its bid in March to play host to Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3, 2013, New Orleans has been considered a sentimental favorite.

And when the Saints and state of Louisiana reached agreement on a long-term lease deal that would keep the Saints playing at the Superdome through 2025 and provide an $85 million renovation to the Dome, New Orleans was viewed as an outright favorite.