Silicon Valley tech giants are ponying up some major cash to ensure that Super Bowl 50 will be played close to home.
The 50th anniversary of the football championship game will be held in 2016.
Apple, Google, HP, Intel and Seagate are among the companies that have pledged to donate around $30 million to the Bay Area Super Bowl Bid Committee, the organization leading the charge to host Super Bowl 50, Mike Rosenberg of the San Jose Mercury News reported Monday.
Most of the money will go to police overtime and beefing up transportation, but around $8 million will go to local charities, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
San Francisco is going up against one other city -- Miami -- for the right to host what will be the 50th Super Bowl in the event's history. NFL owners will cast their final votes on May 21.
"We're joining an all-star team of Silicon Valley and Bay Area companies that share the same history and sense of purpose,'' Todd Bradley, an executive vice president at HP, said Monday at an event in downtown San Francisco held to discuss the Super Bowl bid, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News.
While this looks like a classic East Coast vs. West Coast showdown on paper, the South Florida Super Bowl committee, which has raised $21 million to date, doesn't seem confident about their chances, Douglas Hanks of the Miami Herald reported last week.
This is understandable since the Bay Area Super Bowl committee has a big ace up their sleeve: Levi's Stadium, the $1.2 billion future home of the San Francisco 49ers, which is slated to open for the 2014 NFL season.
South Florida does have one huge advantage over the Bay Area, and that's weather. But the South Florida committee was unable to get the Florida Legislature on board with a taxpayer-funded proposal to renovate Miami's Sun Life Stadium, which opened in 1987, according to the Miami Herald report.
Levi's Stadium won't have a retractable roof, and weather in early February in the Bay Area can be wild and wooly. So weather could be a factor in the game.
But with next year's game, Super Bowl 48, set to be played Feb. 2, 2014 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., the Bay Area could end up looking tropical by comparison.
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