The Bay Area Super Bowl Host Committee on Thursday announced it raised some $40 million to be put towards hosting the championship game in 2016. This fund raise was possible with the help of Tech giants like Apple and Google who call San Francisco their home. Apple, Google, Yahoo and Intel each donated $2 million in cash and services to offset taxpayer dollars associated with bringing the historic 50th Super Bowl to the San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara
In exchange for their donations, each company will receive their own private Super Bowl suite and publicity around the time of the game in 2016. The game will be held in the newly constructed Levi’s Stadium, which be the home of the San Francisco 49ers this year after taking two years and $1.3 billion to build. The stadium is also just 13 miles away from Apple’s headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California.
Previously themed as the “SF Super Bowl”, the new “San Francisco Bay Area” moniker was officially selected to represent a wider swath of the region. The committee is reportedly pushing Bay Area sights ahead of the game, though most activities will take place in San Francisco and Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.
With the $2 million investment, Apple may make a return to the Super Bowl advertiser’s list after being absent for nearly 15 years. Apple helped foster the trend of “blockbuster” Super Bowl television commercials with its iconic “1984” Mac spot, but the company has been silent since 1999. Its final Super Bowl ad featured HAL 9000, the sentient supercomputer from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, taking jabs at the Windows Y2K bug.
The Bay Area is the front runner after south Florida in recent weeks failed to win approval from lawmakers for a $350 million renovation to its 26-year-old stadium.
The Super Bowl, which normally uses Roman numerals to designate the anniversary even number, is taking a one-year break from the practice for the 50th Super Bowl, presumably because the public at large would be confused by a single letter “L” to designate 50. Apple has skillfully avoided something of the same problem with its latest version of OS X: if it had used Roman numerals to designate the forthcoming Yosemite (version 10.10), the numbering might be written as OS XXX.
