TAMPA, Fla. – On Tampa’s riverfront, in a sea of football fans, you can’t miss one family of 12 from Kansas City.
The Bucs are the home team so it’s mostly Buccaneer red at the Super Bowl experience, but the Williams cousins are definitely holding it down for the other red jerseys.
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Lisa Cole said she organized the group’s big trip.
She said the family bought their plane tickets early.
“We got our tickets a while back,” Cole said. “And then we found a hotel so it wasn’t that bad, about $500 a person.”
The family does not have tickets to the game, but whether all the visitors and locals are going to the game or not, Tampa Bay’s tourism office said they’re all still putting their money into the local economy during a challenging time.
“It seems like we’ve hosted Super Bowls during very unusual times,” Visit Tampa Bay President Santiago Corrada said.
Corrada referenced the 2009 recession and the first Gulf War.
“And now we have this one with the pandemic,” he added. “But we’re really excited that our hometown team gets to play in it and see how a hometown team crowd does as far as economic impact and all those things that come along with hosting a Super Bowl.”