Santa Clara is going to host another Super Bowl. And this time, it should host the whole week’s worth of festivities.
On Monday, NFL owners awarded Levi’s Stadium Super Bowl 60, to be played in Feb. 2026.
It’s a bit of a surprise that the Big Game is returning to the Bay, as Super Bowl 50, held back in 2016, left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
Bad planning, bad traffic, bad weather (the sun was out, toasting upper-deck fans), and a downright awful game all led to the widespread belief that Levi’s Stadium’s first Super Bowl would be its last.
Surely, the 49ers and the NFL will try to fix the mistakes of that Super Bowl week. But the easiest solution isn’t using Chase Center or Oracle Park for events this time — it’s hosting the week’s ever-growing list of festivities near the stadium.
Super Bowl LX should be the Silicon Valley Super Bowl, the San Jose Fiesta, the South Bay Celebration.
The last time the Super Bowl came to our region, the week of events was focused in San Francisco, the town the 49ers still pretend to represent.
Yes, SAP Center hosted the early-week Opening Night and the teams practiced at Stanford and San Jose State back in 2016, but big whoop. The big shots and big events were up north. San Francisco’s Market Street was riddled with America’s favorite narcotic — football, and the Moscone Center, the Ferry Building, and Pier 70 were all hot spots throughout the week.
San Jose and the South Bay were an afterthought.
So much so that when folks needed to get to the game on Sunday, no one seemed to consider Highway 101 traffic.
No, the stadium isn’t just “down the street.” That’s a rookie mistake.
It’s an all-too-typical story. There are more than 4 million people between San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Alameda Counties and they are far too easily forgotten when we talk about “The Bay.”
Even with some population decline, San Jose remains the Bay Area’s largest city and one of the largest cities in the United States. And it’s a real city, too, unlike so many of the low-density sprawls in Texas, Arizona, and Florida. Yet the epicenter of Silicon Valley is treated like it’s Sacramento by outsiders (and some insiders, too).
So while the lofty “economic impact” numbers that PR agencies toss around are mostly phony, I think there would be value in San Jose, Santa Clara County, and the South Bay actually serving as the Super Bowl’s true host this time around.
The reason Levi’s Stadium won the bid for Super Bowl LX is simple: it’s running unopposed.
With the World Cup coming to North America in the summer of 2026, many of the NFL’s top-choice stadiums will need to renovate their fields at the end of the NFL season to better accommodate the other kind of football.
Levi’s is ready, though.
And while San Jose and the South Bay will not be running unopposed for the week’s festivities, after so many decades of being treated as second-best — an afterthought — this region deserves some recognition over The City.
It deserves a celebration of itself.
It’s not like there’s not enough corporate money in the region to make it happen.
And after receiving oodles of public funding from the city of Santa Clara, the least the 49ers can do is campaign to make Super Bowl LX a South Bay affair.
San Jose, in particular, should be the epicenter of the Super Bowl week. So much of the news regarding the city is doom-and-gloom, but, like all great cities, San Jose is constantly evolving, and there are plenty of signs this current transition will be for the better. I hope all the positives will be celebrated often between now and 2026, but we should put that party on the books anyways.
I want to see Santana Row and San Pedro Square bustling. Let’s extend Christmas in the Park until February — you know the theme.
Let’s welcome every corporate vice president and big-media airhead to a city and region where modern work actually gets done.
Let’s invite the world to a part of the Bay they have mistakenly overlooked and underestimated for too long.
We’re really going to do this again, so let’s do it right, and celebrate the South Bay, the Silicon Valley, and San Jose this time.
