Going To The Super Bowl? NFL Won’t Allow Tailgating

• The NFL has disallowed tailgating in NFL parking lots at the Super Bowl.
• All of the parking at the Super Bowl is in NFL parking lots.
• This is an effective ban on tailgating at the final game of the NFL season.

MIAMI – Enterprising sports bettors with money to burn that are planning on attending the Super Bowl in Miami this year, should not plan on tailgating. In what some might term as a continuation of the NFL as the “No Fun League”, tailgating has been more or less specifically disallowed at the Super Bowl.

Basically, the way in which the NFL went about doing this is by making all of the parking lots around Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, the Super Bowl location, managed by the NFL before, during and after the game. In an NFL parking lot, the NFL sets the rules about what fans can and cannot do.

Fans are not allowed to, specifically, “have a grill or erect tents”, according to NFL Communications VP Brian McCarthy, talking to CBS4 News in Miami.

The NFL appears to hope that the accommodations provided by the league for the Super Bowl will be sufficient to scratch that tailgating itch. McCarthy cited the “free entertainment in the Gameday Fan Plaza and also inside the stadium with entertainment and programming on the field and on the videoboards.”

Will that be enough to satiate the fans of Patrick Mahomes, The Kansas City Chiefs, and San Francisco 49ers, many of whom paid large amounts of money and traveled from across the country to be here? The jury is still out on that.

The NFL has also imposed two more rules restrictions that might limit the amount of fun people have at the game. First, even though Super Bowl tickets are prohibitively expensive anyway, they do not include parking, and parking must be purchased through a proprietary website. Currently, the cheapest parking tickets available were around $120.

Second, the NFL has made it so that the lots close at 1 a.m. EST after the game, so if you wanted to party on into the night, you’ll have to move your car before doing so.

One upside for people interested in it, however, is that the NFL does have a special lot designated for pickup and drop off via ride-sharing apps.

As far as the actual game goes, Kansas City is mildly favored, at the time of writing -1.5 on the spread and -120 on the money line. The game is expected to be high scoring, with an over/under of 54.5 as of now. Hopefully, the excitement of a potentially high scoring, relatively even game can make the lack of tailgating more palatable to the fans and Super Bowl bettors in attendance.

News tags: Brian McCarthy | Kansas City Chiefs | San Francisco 49ers | Super Bowl LIV