{"id":27562,"date":"2025-10-28T21:40:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T21:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/27562\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T21:40:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T21:40:10","slug":"with-the-super-bowl-march-madness-and-world-cup-around-the-corner-san-jose-tries-to-elevate-itself-with-events-around-the-events-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/27562\/","title":{"rendered":"With the Super Bowl, March Madness and World Cup around the corner, San Jose tries to elevate itself with “events around the events”"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the first of three major sporting events in Silicon Valley right around the corner, the fruits of San Jose\u2019s planning efforts will become more apparent over the next few weeks as the city continues its efforts to boost the potential financial windfalls while creating a memorable experience for residents and sports fans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Santa Clara becomes the first city ever to host the Super Bowl and World Cup matches in a calendar year, San Jose has spent significant time focusing on creating events around the big games.<\/p>\n

This week, 2026 banners will begin lining street poles, and the city is expected to announce over the next four weeks some of the national headlining acts it has secured for the 13 concerts planned across San Jose during gamedays.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that\u2019s happened with these sporting events is they become so cost-prohibitive that the average person can\u2019t go and there\u2019s flat out just not enough tickets,\u201d Sports and Special Events Director Tommy O\u2019Hare said at Monday\u2019s Economic Development Committee meeting. \u201cWe think that\u2019s a bad look for the community, so we want to make sure that everybody in the community has an experience where they feel like they\u2019ve had a Super Bowl experience, they\u2019ve had a March Madness experience and they\u2019ve had a World Cup experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between the Super Bowl, and the World Cup taking place at\u00a0 Levi\u2019s Stadium and NCAA March Madness games scheduled at The SAP Center, Silicon Valley could reap several hundred million dollars in economic activity as it again competes with San Francisco for a share of the financial pie.<\/p>\n

In 2016, when Levi\u2019s Stadium last hosted the Super Bowl, San Francisco saw the lion\u2019s share of activity despite the big game taking place in Santa Clara, drawing disappointment from city officials who felt snubbed<\/a> while recognizing they had missed an opportunity.<\/p>\n

To avoid a repeat performance, San Jose officials highlighted the need for preparation, including the hiring of a temporary sports and special events director<\/a> to spearhead and coordinate their efforts.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s policy work has focused on updating its ordinances for large-scale graphics, creating entertainment zones and more connected neighborhoods and making it easier to find key areas. It has also ramped up marketing efforts, including a \u201cFly, Stay and Play\u201d campaign and created more programming, such as 100 watch parties, several drone shows and projection-mapping events and 13 concerts on gamedays.<\/p>\n

The first watch party will take place on Dec. 5, the day FIFA will hold the World Cup draw. The location of the watch party has not yet been announced.<\/p>\n

While San Jose has removed one of its most visible eyesores for visitors flying into its airport by clearing Columbus Park<\/a>, the city has created a working group involving various departments to reduce the impacts of encampments in downtown and around priority event areas, according to the latest status report.<\/p>\n

The city did not respond to a request for comment on what areas it will prioritize and what resources it would provide, including potential interim housing, if it needs to clear an encampment blocking public right-of-ways.<\/p>\n

San Jose Sports Authority Executive Director John Poch also said a new visitor\u2019s center will open at 93 E. San Carlos St. and is awaiting a contract to be signed by the city manager\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Poch said the visitor center will serve as a one-stop shop for the hotels, restaurants, bars and retail establishments, as well as all 10 districts in the city.<\/p>\n

Along with selling merchandise for San Jose-based teams, Poch highlighted the center\u2019s podcast studio, a community boardroom and programming space. During each marquee sporting game, Poch said the visitor center would also sell event-specific merchandise.<\/p>\n

Though San Francisco was always bound to host the Super Bowl week fanfest due to the lack of acceptable facilities in the South Bay, the NFL already has announced it will host a slew of other sponsored events there before the big game on Feb. 8, raising questions again on whether San Jose has made sufficient inroads.<\/p>\n

Last month, a Super Bowl flag-raising ceremony in San Francisco<\/a> made scant mention of the other Bay Area cities, despite the big game taking place in Santa Clara County. The NFL also announced it would host an innovation summit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Feb. 6.<\/p>\n

The flag-raising event at San Francisco City Hall drew the attention of land-use consultant Bob Staedler, who remarked, \u201cThis should have been done in Santa Clara, where the game is going to be played. Looks like this will be a San Francisco event. San Jose looks to be left behind again.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Moscone Center already hosting the fan experience event between Feb. 4 and Feb. 7, the NFL announced last week that it would also move the Feb. 3 Pro Bowl<\/a> to the convention center.<\/p>\n

San Jose officials have spent the past several months trying to win the rights to Super Bowl media day, known as opening day, but the NFL has not yet announced its decision.<\/p>\n

Poch told The Mercury News last month that he could not comment on Super Bowl activations until the NFL made its official statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWish I could say more, but the NFL was very clear in the message,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

San Jose also intends to host an event around the arrival of both Super Bowl participants, who will fly into San Jose Mineta International Airport on Feb. 1.<\/p>\n

Although the success of the city\u2019s planning efforts is yet to be determined, what is known is that the events have generated a wave of hotel activity as participating teams will stay locally.<\/p>\n

Thus far for the Super Bowl, the city has reported 6,968 hotel nights rooms booked.<\/p>\n

One of the Super Bowl participants will stay in Santa Clara and practice at Stanford University, while the other will use San Jose State\u2019s facility and stay at the downtown San Jose Marriott. NFL staff will use the Signia by Hilton and the downtown Hilton Hotel.<\/p>\n

World Cup planning appears to be going much better, with 58,600 room nights booked at San Jose hotels,\u00a0as Levi\u2019s Stadium will host six games over a few weeks in the summer.<\/p>\n

Participating teams will stay at the downtown San Jose Marriott and Hilton hotels, while the Hotel Valencia will serve as the VIP hotel.<\/p>\n

City officials said San Jose State applied to serve as a potential base camp for a World Cup team before FIFA finalizes the list of eligible sites.<\/p>\n

When FIFA released its third edition of eligible base camp locations in April, no Northern California sites <\/a>appeared on the list, despite Santa Clara serving as a host city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the first of three major sporting events in Silicon Valley right around the corner, the fruits of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[184,387,7,181,100,88,90,89,198,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-27562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-san-jose","14":"tag-san-jose-headlines","15":"tag-san-jose-news","16":"tag-santa-clara-county","17":"tag-south-bay"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}