Nowadays, there truly is an app for everything. Wondering which upcoming exit on the freeway has a gas station, or which has a McDonald’s? There’s an app for that. Care to see what you look like with your friend’s face transposed onto yours, and what they look like with your face transposed onto theirs? Faceswap exists to mitigate your curiosity (and is actually pretty funny). The existence of these apps begs the question: with such rampant app-mania, there must be an app for 50th occurrence of the most celebrated annual event in American culture, right?
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Well, of course there is an app for Super Bowl 50. And what an app it is — brimming with content, the app is formally know as “Road to 50: Explore Super Bowl 50 Celebrations in the San Francisco Bay Area,” and is as comprehensive of an application as an event as important as the Super Bowl deserves. The NFL truly went all out with regards to pre-Super Bowl celebrations, since it is Super Bowl 50, and the app manages to cover all of the necessary ground.
The main attraction that the NFL has created for SB50 is Super Bowl City, which is located right by the Ferry Building in downtown San Francisco. Super Bowl City is “the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee’s free public fan village designed to celebrate the milestone Super Bowl 50,” and it has hosted “interactive games and activities that highlight the [Bay Area’s] technological prowess.” Super Bowl City is unlike anything the NFL has ever done before, and it’s been a ringing success for the football fans and the NFL itself… And the SB50 app contains everything one could ever need to know about the City.
But the SB50 app does not only cover Super Bowl City. It also includes a comprehensive schedule for Super Bowl “week,” which started January 30 and ends February 7, the day of the Super Bowl. Super Bowl Week has featured events in not just Super Bowl City, but at other parts of San Francisco, such as the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and the Ferry Building Marketplace, and the SB50 app gives comprehensive directions to these locations. These events have ranged from “The 50th Mile,” which is a showcase of the previous 49 Super Bowls, to a free Alicia Keys concert than anyone has the ability to attend on the night of February 6, less than 24 hours before the big game.
Accompanying the primary SB50 app is the Super Bowl Stadium App, which is entirely necessary for anyone going to the Super Bowl. Created by VenueNext, the same group that made the app for Levi’s Stadium, the Super Bowl Stadium App is set to enhance the experience of fans at the game to an unprecedented level. During the Super Bowl, the Stadium App will provide its users with the ability to watch instant replays and commercials they would not normally have the ability to see while at the game, and the app will also allow attendees to order food at venues and engage with comprehensive maps of Levi’s Stadium.
The regular SB50 app and Super Bowl Stadium App show just how helpful modern technology can be in advancing the experience of sports fans. And these apps are still just trial runs in the new line of developments that is integrating fans into the sports universe like never before.