San Francisco is a city that is known for many things, from the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, to Cable Cars and Chinatown. For this week, however, the focus is on football, as the Bay Area hosts the 50th Super Bowl.
“This is a combination of a two-and-a-half year journey,” said Keith Bruce, CEO and President of the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee. “When the Host Committee was formed in September of 2013, we came up with the ambitious goal of redefining the Super Bowl.”
Perhaps one of the defining colors of the 50th Big Game is the color gold. Gold-themed promotions has been shown, all season long.
“We knew the 50th Super Bowl would be a milestone, historic moment for the NFL,” said Bruce. And the energy that was around us at the time just motive us to say ‘hey, how do we do this differently.’”
“We started all the way back to last year’s draft, where we introduced the gold.” said Peter O’Reilly, NFL Senior Vice President of Events. “It’s pulled through the Hall of Fame game, the kickoff, which was out here in San Francisco as well, all the way through the year.”
This is the second time the Bay Area has played host to the Big Game. The first time was in 1985, when the game took place in Stanford. Super Bowl 50 is set to take place in Santa Clara, outside of San Francisco. Nevertheless, San Francisco has spent approximately $5 Million, to ensure that it has enough to satisfty an estimated 1 million visitors.
“If anything, this is gonna go down in history as a special Super Bowl, and not just for the for numeric number that was used, and changed from the Roman Numerals, but also for its philanthropic accomplishments that we’ve already seen, through the Super Bowl Fund.” said Ed Lee, Mayor of San Francisco
The economic impact of hosting the 50th Big Game could reach $800 million, and Sunday’s game is expected to have a wide audience, as the last six Big Games were watched by 100 million people, nationwide.
