San Francisco a winner with out-of-town Super Bowl fans

San Francisco a winner with out-of-town Super Bowl fans

Even if it cost $700 a night to stay in somebody’s Airbnb and one Bud Light cost as much as a six-pack during the NFL’s high holy week.

Sure, some visitors found the free Super Bowl City area near the Embarcadero was too crowded and a bit of a letdown.

[...] yes, it was a minor pain after partying in San Francisco all week to have to sit for a couple of hours in a luxury bus to get to the game in Santa Clara.

[...] Super Bowl visitors are the kind of people who don’t mind spending the equivalent of a month’s rent on a Super Bowl ticket, if they didn’t already get it comped through corporate connections.

Coming back from a commercial break, pregame host James Brown encouraged the audience to enjoy the lovely “aerial shots of Super Bowl 50.”

City leaders were worried that wealthy tourists would be freaked out by all the homeless on the streets or frightened by any number of street demonstrations.

Maggie Payne, who was visiting from New York as guest of a corporate sponsor, found Super Bowl City “a little underwhelming.”

“The problem is not the homeless, it is the smell of weed — it was everywhere in Civic Center,” said Marcio Nobrega, a banker who traveled from Brazil with his wife and two children for the game and paid $3,000 apiece for tickets.