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The Bay Area and South Florida will make final Super Bowl 50 oral presentations to NFL owners in a week and a half, but in the meantime, both sides have submitted their final bids to owners. The Bay Area has to be considered a favorite given Florida's rejection of a financing plan for Sun Life Stadium. That being said, the Bay Area is not taking things lightly, as they dropped the hammer in their final written presentation.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, the Bay Area Super Bowl committee submitted their presentation via iPad to all 32 NFL owners. When the owners open the box containing the iPad, the presentation automatically starts with a message from San Francisco mayor Ed Lee. Although the game itself will take place in Santa Clara, most of the events will take place in and around San Francisco.
The Mercury News has became the go-to place for exclusive stadium-related news, which is not surprising as the team moves all their operations to Santa Clara county. They will remain the San Francisco 49ers, but the organization finds itself in an interesting situation in terms of how the team is represented to the entire Bay Area.
The Merc got an exclusive look at the presentation, which follows their look at stadium bills to date. The presentation covers everything from media day to the pre-Super Bowl owners' dinner to the NFL Experience location. The committee is using the entire greater Bay Area to their advantage, going south, north and everywhere in between.
For example, NFL owners will get tee times at Pebble Beach, and the annual pre-Super Bowl owners' dinner will be served by Thomas Keller, owner of the world-renowned French Laundry. While neither of these things impact the overall Super Bowl experience, it certainly will not look bad with the voting owners. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge!
The presentation included comments from a Google executive, who "committed to leading what could be an unprecedented partnership among Silicon Valley megacompanies ... in proclaiming his mission to mark the game's 50th anniversary with new, undisclosed technology to create "the most innovative Super Bowl ever."
The main set-up for Super Bowl week will be on the Embarcadero, with the NFL Experience set to take place at the Moscone Center. The Merc indicated that Fox Theater in Oakland and the Santa Clara Convention Center were among numerous facilities around the Bay Area that would be on "standby" for potential events. Additionally, Levi's Stadium will have 5,000 temporary seats added for the game. It currently is scheduled to seat 68,500 when it opens in 2014, so they would be looking at over 73,000 seats for Super Bowl 50.
The Bay Area Super Bowl Committee should have a leg up on the South Florida committee, but that hasn't stopped them from providing what should be a dominant showing in the presentation portion of the Super Bowl bid process. We'll get a final answer for all this on May 21.
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