Levi's Stadium events calendar filling fast

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ByDavid Louie KGO logo
Friday, May 16, 2014
Levi's Stadium events calendar filling fast
Anticipation is growing as completion of Levi's Stadium nears and along with it, more events are getting booked.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (KGO) -- With the turf in and the stands ready, construction crews are focusing now on finish work. And the calendar keeps filling up with more events, anxious to be associated with the gleaming new stadium.

The Pac-12 conference, announced a three-year deal to play its football championship games there starting this December. "As a future Super Bowl site, we know that this stadium was built with a vision for big-time events. So, we're delighted to be here, especially in the opening year," said Pac-12 Conference Commissioner Larry scott.

49ers CEO Jed York said the team's season ticket holders said they wanted to see Pac-12 championship games at Levi's Stadium. An estimated 80 percent of them have ties to a Pac-12 school. "This was the number one asked-about event for the three years during the whole process for building Levi's Stadium," York said.

The first game to be played at Levi's is just over two months away. So, expectations are growing that all the work will be done in time. It all has to be fine-tuned by the first game in early August. Jed York says everything will be ready, although there might be a few hiccups.

Stadium-wide Wi-Fi nodes are going in. So are flat screen monitors. It promises to be a technical showplace, but it may need some fine-tuning during the season.

"Our fan base, who's probably more technology savvy than anybody else in the world, we want to make sure they understand this and we want them to break it. We want them to figure out what's wrong and we want to get as much feedback as possible," York said.

And confidence remains high that fans will be able to adapt to a new facility.

"We've got over 25,000 parking stalls within a 15, 20-minute walk that we're already committed to. And we're really confident that probably 20, 25 percent of the fans that come down to Levi's are going to take public transportation," said 49ers President Paraag Marathe.