The Bay Area is known for its high housing prices, and with Super Bowl 50 coming up, it’s also making headlines for high accommodation prices. With many of the Super Bowl festivities in San Francisco, the game at least 45 minutes south in Santa Clara, and the teams practicing at Stanford and San Jose State, the whole area has connections to the game, and many locals and local businesses are trying to cash in. Plenty of people are renting their homes on Airbnb, which has seen 86 per cent more listings in Santa Clara for Super Bowl weekend than any other February weekend, and the hotels are getting into the act too (for those rooms that are left; the local organizing committee estimated that the NFL booked almost half of the approximately 50,000 hotel rooms in the nine-county Bay Area). One of the fanciest packages comes from the Fairmont San Francisco, as illustrated by this October story:

The Fairmont Hotel is no exception. All of its regular rooms are sold out for Super Bowl week and there are just a few suites left. “So we are in the library of the penthouse right now, it’s a 6, 500 square-foot penthouse built as a residence on top of the Fairmont Hotel. We’re trying for $250,000 for a four-day minimum stay,” Fairmont Hotel manager Bernd Pichler said. That price tag comes with a helicopter ride to the game in Santa Clara.

Hey, that helicopter ride would be one way to avoid game-day traffic! And there’s even a secret passageway to the rooftop helipad. No word yet on if that one’s been booked, but it’s certainly one of the fanciest options out there. The Fairmont San Jose’s penthouse deal ($150,000 for three nights, complete with chauffeured Escalades, a premium bar, and $5,000 in Apple gift cards) seems downright economical by contrast. Airbnb users are getting in on the high prices, too, as this AP story shows:

There’s a luxury 8,500-square-foot home in San Jose, California, listed for $10,000 a night. A 400-square-foot cottage in the same city is going for $3,900 for the three-night weekend. A four-bedroom apartment near San Francisco’s “Super Bowl City” is listed at $1,495 a night, with a minimum six night stay.

Hotels aren’t a cheap option for non-fancy packages, either, but there are some deals out there. Priceline found some 2-star hotels with rooms between $65 and $746, 3-star hotels with rate $145-$899 a night and four-star hotels asking between $979 and $1,249 a night heading into last weekend. An even more economical (and rustic) option, though? This Burlingame treehouse:

While they range from helicopters to treehouses, none of the options for Super Bowl accommodation are particularly cheap.

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.