Every Super Bowl takes on the culture of the city that hosts it. South Beach in Miami. The French Quarter in New Orleans. Hollywood in Los Angeles.
It will be no different on Sunday when the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks face off at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, an hour’s drive south of San Francisco. Proximity to some of the world’s largest technology companies, venture capital firms and entertainment companies will ensure the presence of a veritable parade of corporate executives, celebrities and those hoping to get close to them.
“The Super Bowl in the Bay Area is the perfect juxtaposition of ‘Ballers’ with ‘Billions’ and ‘Silicon Valley,'” said Venky Ganesan, partner at Menlo Ventures, a Silicon Valley investment firm. “Just like in these three series, all the characters that make these caricatures real are appearing in the stadium.”
Ganesan said he planned to attend the game as a guest along with several “prominent” friends from the technology world, although he declined to name them. The game, according to him, is irresistible in his professional circles.
The Super Bowl in Silicon Valley “is tech billionaires who were picked last in gym class paying $50,000 to pretend they’re friends with the guys who were picked first,” he said. “And for the record, I was also picked last in physical education.”
Some of these tech titans are expected to include Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, which pays the NFL at least $2 billion a year to stream the Sunday Ticket package of games, which will be in NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s box; Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services — which sponsors the halftime show — and his boss, Tim Cook; and Alan Waxman, CEO of San Francisco-based private equity group Sixth Street, which bought 3% of the Patriots in November.
Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton and Justin Bieber are also expected to attend.
Some started pregame celebrations early. On Friday night, the streets of the Embarcadero, San Francisco’s waterfront, were jammed with autonomous Waymos, many transporting passengers to corporate-sponsored parties. California Governor Gavin Newsom stopped by the FanDuel x Spotify party at Pier 29, chatting with tech executives in the VIP area while Green Day played an hour-long set. Companies like Uber and Fanatics promoted performances by Olivia Dean, Cardi B and SZA that continued on Saturday.
For Bay Area A-listers, getting a ticket to the game involves little more than a phone call. But for almost everyone else, getting a ticket will be more difficult than usual because so many deep-pocketed fans, league sponsors and rights holders are concentrated in California. Fans of both teams also want to witness their heroes lift the Lombardi Trophy, and fans living in the area have a rare chance to watch the Super Bowl in their own backyard.
Another restriction on getting tickets: space needs to be reserved for additional television cameras, thousands of media personnel, booths for international broadcasters and extra security. Capacity for Sunday’s game will be about 65,000 instead of the 70,000 tickets normally available for regular season games.
Only about a quarter of tickets are available to the general public, with the rest going to NFL teams.
The Patriots and Seahawks received 17.5% of tickets, or 11,375 per team. The host team — the San Francisco 49ers — received another 5%, or about 3,200 tickets. The other 29 NFL teams received 1.2% each, or 34.8% overall, of the available seats. There are another 22,500 tickets.
Teams use tickets in a variety of ways. The owner, senior team executives and players buy many of them. Teams are required to make at least 35% of their tickets available to season ticket holders.
That leaves just 16,380 tickets, or just over 25% of the stadium, for everyone else, and the prices aren’t cheap. As of Friday, the average ticket resale price for the game was $6,687, according to SeatGeek, a secondary market ticket reseller. The cheapest ticket available was $4,237 with fees.
The largest concentration of fans who purchased tickets — 27% — came from the neighboring state of Washington. California fans made up the second largest group, at 16%. A good number of these buyers live in Los Angeles. Massachusetts fans accounted for just 7% of sales. In addition to the distance to California, the Patriots have played in nine Super Bowls this century, so some fans have already crossed the game off their bucket lists.
Ticket prices on the secondary market are about 20% lower than this time last year, a function of the mix of teams and their proximity to the Super Bowl city. Las Vegas, which first hosted the game two years ago, had exceptionally expensive tickets because of the novelty of playing there.
Typically, prices skyrocket after teams qualify two weeks before the Super Bowl, and some ticket holders try to resell their tickets for a big profit. Prices then gradually drop until hours before the game when last-minute buyers show up.
There may be more of them this year because many wealthy fans live near the stadium, said Chris Leyden, director of growth marketing at SeatGeek.
“They’re going to wake up on Sunday morning and decide to go,” he said. “Five thousand dollars could mean something very different to someone in another income bracket.”
The concentration of money, powerful companies and good weather in the Bay Area virtually guarantees the Super Bowl will return, said Andy Dolich, who has worked for the Oakland A’s, Golden State Warriors and 49ers.
“If the NFL had looked to the future and had a game that is bicoastal, has great history in a market that is the hub of technology, with a significant amount of money and a local team that has won multiple Super Bowls, in a climate that would make people consider moving, then Super Bowl 60 worked well.”
