Of the San Francisco Super Bowl L Bidding Committee group that made the trip, San Francisco 49ers Team Chairman Jed York, Chair and Tipping Point CEO Daniel Lurie, Former SF Giants Enterprises Executive Director Pat Gallagher, San Francisco Travel Authority President Joe D’Alessandro, 49ers President Gideon Yu, and the SF Bidding Committee’s behind-the-scenes staffer, the York’s and Mr. Lurie came to meet the press.
“The NFL awarded Super Bowl 50 to The Bay Area. We are extremely excited,” said Jed York. Then pointing to Lurie said “there’s been a lot of work to this bid, headed by Daniel Lurie. On behalf of the family, we are just so excited to be able to put on the Golden Super Bowl in the Golden State for, I think, the greatest fans and the greatest community in the World.”
York then turned the podium over to Lurie: “Jed, thank you. Dr. York, thank you. Gideon Yu, thank you. This has been an honor and a privilege to work on this effort over the past nine months. And Jed, and Mayor Lee, and Mayor Matthews and Mayor Reed – we’ve pulled together as a community to put our best foot forward. We had everybody going in the right direction and the same direction. For us, this is a huge moment. The Bay Area is extremely excited. Our phones are blowing up. And we’re excited to show you all the Bay Area has to offer for 2016 for Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium.”
Pat Gallagher and Joe D’Alessandro Were Key
The two people that, in my view, formed the backbone of the effort, other than the lone paid staffer, were Pat Gallagher and Joe D’Alessandro. Those two got 22,000 hotel rooms under contract and that’s no small feat. For Oakland, the best we had were 7,821 rooms, and letter a commitment for 15,000 more rooms from the Santa Mateo County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The problem is in getting the hotel managers to understand that you can’t win a bid without them. “We had to twist a lot of arms” to get this done, said Gallagher.
But the most important element the San Francisco Super Bowl Bidding Committee had going for it was teamwork. We didn’t have that in Oakland, and to this day, a lack of teamwork, in all areas, consistently stops Oakland from moving forward.
Stay tuned.