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Super Bowl Sunday has always been a holy day on the American calendar. But with the NFL’s annual overseas dalliances no longer a novelty, social media and 24-hour news cycles allowing the whole world to follow along, and the minting of flag football as an Olympic sport, the big game has also become a global event.
This year in particular, walking in and around Levi’s Stadium in the Bay Area—where the Seattle Seahawks made mincemeat of the New England Patriots on Sunday—felt a bit like attending an international summit of football fans. Taking in the game from Marriott Bonvoy’s endzone suite, I was introduced to an eclectic band of globetrotters who had turned their lives of constant travel into a sweet reward: a VIP experience at Super Bowl LX. By cashing in over two million Bonvoy points for the full Super Bowl suite treatment—via Marriott Bonvoy Moments and other special packages—these experienced travelers also had access to perks like walking the red carpet at NFL honors, attending the Pro Bowl Games, and tapping into some 2000s nostalgia at Marriott Bonvoy House, where the All-American Rejects strummed their slew of hits on Friday night.
As I chowed down on the suite’s buffet of crab finger sandwiches, fresh sushi, and pork belly mac and cheese, I met people like Rick from Chicago, who was at his fifth Super Bowl in a row courtesy of Marriott. Over the course of his half-decade of big games (that’s Bay Area, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Arizona, and Los Angeles), Rick has crossed paths with celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx. His eyes really lit up with adoration, though, when telling me that he and his son were lucky enough to meet Alix Earle.
Through their Super Bowl escapades, Rick has also become familiar with Glen, a sweet Nova Scotian who called me “darling” and was enjoying either his eighth or ninth Super Bowl in a row, he couldn’t remember. Despite his vibe being slightly harshed by the Patriots’ putrid performance—hailing from the Halifax area, Glen became a Boston sports fan through geographical proximity—he had no regrets about exchanging his glut of travel points for a weekend in the sun.
Two seats down from me was Swen, who came armed with a German accent, stylish glasses, and a commemorative Super Bowl LX jersey with a giant 60 as the uniform number. Sven used to play football in his homeland, and when I asked what made him want to use his points on a trip to the big game, he gestured out toward the sunny gridiron paradise. “The weather in Germany is cold,” he said.
As the final seconds ticked off the clock and Seahawk-colored confetti filled the sky, I snapped a photo for Marc and Natalie of Naples, Florida, to have as a souvenir. “We don’t even go to football games,” Marc said, laughing at the fact that when they actually decided to do so, it was for the game that’s a top-of-the-bucket-list item for sports devotees. Of course, with its exorbitant ticket prices and the added travel costs for most fans, the Super Bowl does tend to have a more corporate crowd than other major sporting events. Outside the suite—whether it was at the hotel, in local restaurants and watering holes, or while bopping around the San Francisco streets—I did encounter several people who hit me with a shrug and an “I’m just kind of here” response when I asked what brought them to town. Trying to strike up a friendly pregame elevator chat with a man in a New England hat led to him revealing that he’d just come in from Scottsdale and only bought the lid to have something to wear to the game.
People like him—along with countless brand activations and the ever-present influencer crowd—are a staple of Super Bowl week. The lobby of the bustling Marriott Marquis in downtown San Francisco felt like an airport all weekend, thanks to the constant shuffle of people in and out and the international flavor of guests. Australians at the bar, Englishmen at the coffee shop, French Canadians crossing the lobby in Expos caps—it was easy to forget at times that an American football game was at the center of this whole thing.
Of course, there was no shortage of Seahawks and Patriots gear as well, along with the obscure jerseys you only see at ballparks, arenas, or music festivals (shout out to the guy proudly strutting in his Sam Darnold Jets kit, now an unexpected grail). Maybe the most heartwarming sight at any Super Bowl, however, is when you spot a group all wearing the same player’s jersey and quickly deduce that they must be that player’s family. On Sunday morning before the game, I observed a contingent of Will Campbell supporters from afar. I thought about them often as Campbell got his lunch eaten by Seattle’s hungry pass rushers, knowing that their postgame would likely involve trying to console the rookie left tackle, while mine would involve looking at a lot of memes about how poorly he blocked.
The fans that flock to the Super Bowl each year come together to create a single harmonious painting, and the most pivotal brushstrokes are the graybeards who have spent their entire lives obsessively backing their teams. At a tailgate before kickoff—where the Chainsmokers, for some reason, were performing in the middle of the day—a 62-year-old man with a walking cane and an oversized Seahawks logo chain explained to me that he and his wife had driven 11 and a half hours from Kelso, Washington, to drink in the schadenfreude of the Hawks playing for a championship on the 49ers’ turf. He got into the details of his life (like the fact that his daughter plays full-contact, padded football and that he’s about to get his hip replaced), before guaranteeing that he’ll be back in Santa Clara next year when the Seahawks make their annual visit. “I’ve got this whole place scouted out,” he beamed.
For so many people who travel to the Super Bowl, boarding the flight to the host city—or loading up the car for an epic road trip—sets off a chain of emotions. There’s the Christmas morning-type of excitement that hits when you realize you’re going to the Super Bowl, before the angst-filled anticipation that defines Thursday, Friday, and Saturday settles in. Then Sunday rolls around, and you watch a football game with a cinematic concert in the middle of it. Those with a rooting interest hope to leave happy, while the neutrals just beg for a close game.
Perhaps this year’s best Super Bowl travel story, though, belongs to Alana and her aunt Debbie. The pair of Western Washington residents won the tenth edition of Marriott Bonvoy’s Super Bowl Sleepover Suite sweepstakes, a contest with a grand prize that sounds devised by the football gods themselves. The night before the game, Alana and Debbie laid their heads in a Levi’s Stadium suite that Marriott transformed into a tricked-out hotel room, meaning that they woke up on Super Bowl Sunday in the stadium where their favorite team would later be crowned champions. “I thought I was being punked,” Debbie told me, sporting a royal blue Jaxon Smith-Njigba shirt, about learning that Alana had won the sweepstakes and chosen her as her guest. Alana lives in Tacoma, while Debbie is in Snohomish—a small city roughly 45 minutes north of Seattle—in a house with its very own dedicated Seahawks room. “Her house is always Seahawks headquarters during NFL season,” Alana said of her aunt. “When I think of the NFL, I think of her first.”
It was the first in-person Super Bowl for both women, who came down from the Northwest on the Tuesday of Super Bowl week. Their winning play in the sweepstakes came from a short video they filmed after becoming one of 20 semifinalists. In the video (which Debbie was thrilled to send to me, a fellow owner of a Seattle area code phone number), they showed Debbie’s most recent Christmas tree, covered in Seahawk paraphernalia, and detailed Debbie losing her husband to pancreatic cancer while herself surviving breast cancer twice. “But through it all, Seahawks Sundays stayed sacred,” Alana narrated, her voice digitally sped up to keep the video under the 30-second limit. “We don’t just deserve to be at the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl deserves fans like us.”