Yahoo! Becomes Exclusive Partner Of 49ers Online Content

I get as excited as anyone thinking about the upcoming 49ers season. Quite a bit has happened since we were five yards from winning the Super Bowl. The stadium was branded with the Levi’s logo, we got Anquan Boldin from the Ravens for pretty much nothing, and Michael Crabtree suffered a hefty injury. Yahoo!, while on a purchasing spree of startups, decided to align themselves with SF’s most beloved football team (sorry Raider fans) by inking a 10 year deal that makes them the 49ers exclusive partner for online digital content.

Levi’s stadium has been called the “smartest” stadium ever built. With a focus on mobile, the 49ers took into account that nearly everyone who attends a game will be bringing their own smartphone. The stadium will be able to provide Wi-Fi to nearly 70,000 people on any given Sunday. Fans are said to be able to interact with other people in the stadium, watch replays from different camera angles, and possibly order food directly to their seats so they don’t have to miss a down of football. One of the most attractive highlights is being able to upload a photo to Flikr, and possibly be shown on the stadium’s jumbotron. That’s assuming, like me, you’ve always wanted to be on a jumbotron.

As part of the partnership, Yahoo! will be the exclusive digital content, social network, and online photo/video partner for the San Francisco 49ers. Expect to see lots of Yahoo! branding around the new stadium as they’ve been given rights to the Fantasy Football Lounge, along with logo placement inside and outside the stadium.

Partnerships like this are becoming more commonplace in the sports world. Big brands have been buying naming rights to stadiums for decades now. Tech companies have been no stranger to those deals. Oracle Arena and Overstock.com Coliseum are two such names bought by their respective companies for naming rights in Oakland.

Financial terms for the Yahoo! agreement weren’t revealed, but one can assume that such a high-profile stadium set to host the Super Bowl in three years can charge quite a premium. It’s also good to know Marissa Mayer wears red and gold on the weekends.

Go Niners.