San Francisco 49ers bigwigs are warm to a London Super Bowl as the NFL mulls taking their showpiece match overseas.
There has been a lot of talk surrounding whether the top American football league would ever see an overseas franchise, and whether the Super Bowl would ever leave the shores of the United States.
But president of the 49ers Al Guido, whose side’s Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara will host the next Super Bowl, believes London would be a good staging city.
“I personally would really love to see it,” Guido, who also sits as the CEO of Elevate, which brokered Everton’s stadium sponsorship deal with law firm Hill Dickinson, tells City AM.
“I’ve had the pleasure of being with the 49ers as we played in Wembley. I don’t know where and when it will happen. It’s not far-fetched to believe that it will happen at some point.
“Taking the world’s biggest NFL game and putting it in other places can make a lot of strategic sense.”
Lobbying for Super Bowl
If a Super Bowl were to be held in London then it would be a straight shootout between the 90,000-capacity Wembley Stadium and the state-of-the-art Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, both of which will host matches this autumn in the 18th international London series. Rugby’s Twickenham – now Allianz Stadium – has also hosted London matches.
It is likely that Manchester United’s New Trafford would be keen to get in on the action, too, if completed in time to bid for a British Super Bowl bid.
And British ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson had recently been lobbying to bring the game to these shores.
“London as a city is fantastic, and we have great fans there,” Guido adds. “I give a lot of credit to both stadiums that have done a nice job putting on events, and so the infrastructure is there, the fandom is there.
“It’s the last game so the travel and logistics are fairly easy to deal with. As long as the Super Bowl always remains two weeks after the Championship games you can make a real argument for logistically it being possible. All those things come into play, but it’s very clear that you guys have the infrastructure to pull it off.”
The next Super Bowl takes place in California next February, 10 years after Levi’s Stadium hosted an iconic showpiece match which included a half-time show of Coldplay, Beyonce, Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson.