J
Justin Herrick
Guest
The NFL’s biggest event of the year, the Super Bowl, isn’t just about attracting millions of eyeballs in the United States and around the world. It’s much more than a giant spectacle on television. Hosting a Super Bowl means that a city and its surrounding areas will be flooded with visitors for a couple of days in early February. And this year it’s the San Francisco Bay Area’s turn to put together a week-long celebration as the NFL honors the Super Bowl’s 50th anniversary. It only makes sense for the league to ask local giant businesses to sponsor and be advisers to the Super Bowl Host Committee.
Among the executives involved with the Super Bowl Host Committee are Alphabet SVP David Drummond, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. Each of their companies join Hewlett Packard Enterprise, SAP, Seagate, Uber, and Lyft as committee sponsors or partners.
Being a sponsor and adviser unsurprisingly means that these companies will be heavily involved in Super Bowl 50, especially Alphabet and Uber to combat inevitable congestion in the Bay Area.
The shuttle buses that are normally used to transport Alphabet employees between San Francisco and Silicon Valley will be used to get thousands of fans to Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. People that wish to ride these shuttle buses will need to pay $55 per person, but Alphabet will not be collecting any money and is instead deferring it to operators.
Since more than one million people are estimated to arrive for the Super Bowl, Alphabet wants to do its part in reducing traffic at a reasonable cost. That’s also why Uber is an official partner for Super Bowl 50. The Super Bowl Host Committee is working with Uber to coordinate transportation for around 70,000 people attending the actual game on February 7. Lyft was contacted about a partnership but declined, giving Uber exclusive access to a massive amount of people needing rides home (or to post-game parties).
Keith Bruce, CEO of the super Bowl Committee, talked to Digits about Super Bowl 5’s community engagement:
“Tech companies saw this as an opportunity to host a very important local Bay Area initiative. The Super Bowl is a huge part of American culture and it’s the most-watched sporting event in the U.S. The scale of it was definitely attractive to tech firms, and the fact that it touches so many different types of people.”
Apple, being the sly little devil that it is, decided to donate equipment — presumably Macbooks and iPads — to the Super Bowl Host Committee while requesting it not have its name or logo placed on any promotional materials.
Super Bowl 50 will be televised and streamed live by CBS on February 7 at 6:30PM ET.
Via: Digits
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