This Sunday, America grinds to a halt. Super Bowl 50 sees the Carolina Panthers take on the Denver Broncos in the annual climactic end to the American football season. But just as important as the ‘gridiron action’ on the pitch is what’s happening off it. Make no mistake, Sunday is the day the nerds have their revenge on the jocks.
After all, Super Bowl 50 isn’t being held just anywhere. The festival of American football is taking place in Santa Clara, 40 miles south of San Francisco. That puts it in reach of Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires, and boy, have they made their presence felt.
At the new $1.3bn Levi’s “smart” stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, 400 miles of fibre optic cable have been laid down, providing 40 times more internet bandwidth than the nation’s next best stadium. Checking your emails mid-match isn’t going to be a problem, and Google, one of the sponsors, wants you to know it.
That’s why the online search engine has paid $200m to have the right to lay on 100 buses normally reserved for its staff to ferry fans to the game.
NiNerds
In the vanguard of nerdiness at the stadium are the “NiNerds”. These tech-savvy helpers, (a play on the Forty-Niners name), will come running to the rescue of any of the 70,000 fans grappling to get to grips with the bafflingly complicated software extravaganza.
As John Harlow writes in The Sunday Times, apps have been created that will “bombard” fans “with a thousand different statistics a minute – just to make the workaholics feel as if they have not left the office”.
Step outside the stadium – if you dare – and you can hone your American football bar-room knowledge by ‘reliving’ past games on virtual reality headsets. Some even include “gaze detection technology”, allowing you to put yourself in the players’ boots and decide on the game-play tactics yourself. If it proves a hit, the technology may be rolled out more fully for next year’s Super Bowl, says Harlow.
My colleague Matthew took a recent look at virtual reality and what it means for investors – check it out here.
Bluffing can only take you so far
Of course, if you have the money (and you need rather a lot of it), you don’t need to bone up on American football rules and terminology. “Game butlers” will be on hand to explain the finer points of the high impact sport to well-heeled spectators as the game goes along.
Talking of “well-heeled”, a luxury suite at the stadium graced by the likes of Yahoo boss Marissa Mayer will set you back up to $600,000. That’s around £414,000 at today’s exchange rate – for just four hours.
But for those who really want to send their bank managers into a spin, Fairmont San Francisco hotel is offering “the king of all Super Bowl 50 bundles”, says Kristin Tablang on Forbes.com. The Million-Dollar Fantasy Big Game 50 package comprises 22 ‘access all areas’ tickets to the game, and a four-night stay in the luxury hotel’s penthouse suite for six guests.
You also get to throw your own “tailgate party” complete with Fairmont chef and bartender. But in case you haven’t already guessed, the “million-dollar” bit in the package’s name isn’t figurative. It actually costs $1m.
Jocks and nerds aren’t so different
A million dollars is small beer for a top-flight American football player. Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers is on a salary of $46.4m. Add in endorsements and his pay jumps to $48.9m. But a career in the sport also tends to be brief. According to CNN, the average age of retirement is just 28.
That’s why, as Julia Carrie Wong and Nellie Bowles point out in The Guardian, the National Football League (NFL) “has encouraged players to look to Silicon Valley for their second careers”. NFL Hall of Famer Joe Montana will be “on display” at this year’s Super Bowl for having become a tech industry angel investor in the San Francisco Bay Area.
And it’s why, when viewers tune into CBS for the Super Bowl warm-up on Sunday, they will be greeted by former American football star Tony Gonzalez, whose fitness app was recently snapped up by Fitbit. Maybe jocks and nerds aren’t so different after all.