The best thing about American football happens before the kick-off
By Kate Allman
Charcoal smoke lofts above Chevrolet and Dodge utes with side mirrors the size of flat-screen televisions. Beer, barbecues and bass-heavy music stifle the air in Santa Clara. A tent city has sprung up between vehicles.
It’s three hours to kick off in January’s National Football League playoff game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers, and the tailgate party is in full swing.
Smoke from tailgaters’ barbecues lingers in the air prior to a game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers.Credit: Getty Images
Tailgating is a spectacle unique to American football, also called gridiron. Thousands of fans converge on the asphalt parking lots surrounding the nation’s largest stadiums, armed with portable barbecues, secret sauces, coolers and music speakers.
It’s a tradition that reportedly dates to the 1860s, when people began travelling across the country in wagons to see college football games, enjoying picnics in their vehicles before kick-off. When motors replaced horses and Americans developed their obsession with big cars, the ritual became ingrained. Modern stadiums were literally planned and built according to their capacity to park thousands of cars in fields around them. Driving to games is so embedded that when Taylor Swift held her 2024 Australian tour, Americans on social media were flummoxed by aerial shots of Melbourne Cricket Ground, asking: “Where do you guys park?”
A sprawl of red, gold and white tarpaulins stretches for more than a kilometre across a gravel parking lot in the shadow of Levi’s Stadium, about an hour’s drive south of downtown San Francisco. Grey winter drizzle has soaked the ground into a quagmire. But weather won’t dampen the dedication of Americans to their football, and nothing stops the pre-game partying that goes with it.
“We’re out here when it’s pouring. Rain or shine,” says Joe Leonor, founder of The Niner Empire, an online community connecting San Francisco football fans around the world. Leonor says the Empire has more than 160 “chapters” globally. About 50 members are milling around barbecues under his tarpaulin today.
“Game day, I’m up at 4.30 in the morning, loading the truck, getting everything prepared. Setting up, tearing it down and cleaning afterwards. It’s a whole-day ritual,” he says.
Pre-game partying at Levi’s Stadium, San Francisco.Credit: Getty Images
In the week prior to the San Francisco match, social media vision of a snow-laden parking lot in upstate New York went viral as Buffalo Bills fans tailgated in waist-deep powder. Fires burned in barrels to fight the minus 15-degree temperatures. In the central state of Missouri, defiant fans were hospitalised with frostbite at a Kansas City Chiefs game, a handful reportedly getting fingers and toes amputated later.
Authorities have little hope of curbing the practice so they resort to controlling it in designated areas. The 49ers allow tailgating at their home ground in specific parking lots but you need to book weeks (if not months) in advance to secure your place for $US75 ($110).
Rather than test my US driving skills in peak traffic, I opt to book seats on the M-Ride fan shuttle. For $US90 it transports Niner fans from Lombard Street in the Marina district to the stadium in Santa Clara. Public transport is cheaper, but it is much slower and it requires a couple of train and bus changes.
Don’t try bringing any bags, food or drink into the stadium – security guards bin everything including my plastic water bottle on entry. Do leave at least 40 minutes to make the 1.5-kilometre pilgrimage from the parking lot to the looming gates, to go through metal detectors and then find your seat. American football games are unrivalled for their electric atmosphere, and you don’t want to miss a moment.
Two tickets in the sky-high upper rim of the stadium cost me $US900 when they went on sale a month prior. It is a play-off match so it costs considerably more than a regular season game average of $US120 per seat. A US Air Force F-16 jet roars above our heads during a stirring rendition of The Star-spangled Banner sung by Tony Lindsay, the lead vocalist of Santana, to start the match. It ends with 72,000 poncho-clad Niner fans screaming through driving rain over a nail-biting three-point victory.
Worth every cent.
The details
Do
The NFL season runs from September to February, culminating in the Super Bowl on February 9 2025. Tickets for play-offs can cost thousands of dollars for prime seats but regular season matches start around $200. For San Francisco tickets, go to 49ers.com/tickets
Fly
A handful of airlines fly non-stop from Australia to the US West Coast cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, making these cities the most convenient places to catch a game. Los Angeles boasts two teams – the Chargers and the Rams – who play out of the megalithic, $9 billion dollar So-Fi Stadium.
Stay
Levi’s Stadium is closer to San Francisco International Airport than the city. Pick a hotel or an Airbnb in Santa Clara for easy (and cheap) access to games.
Downtown, The Jay hotel is an oasis within walking distance of most hotspots like Embarcadero and the Marina District. The designer interiors and views are beautiful, the hotel gym is impressive, and room size is generous in a city not known for space. See jayhotelsf.com
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