Candlestick Park
Plans were underway to construct a new 68,000-seat stadium at Candlestick Point. On November 8, 2006, however, the 49ers announced that they would abandon their search for a location in San Francisco and begin to pursue the idea of building a stadium in Santa Clara. As a result, San Francisco withdrew its bid for the 2016 Olympics on November 13, 2006, as its centerpiece stadium was lost. Groundbreaking for the Santa Clara stadium occurred on April 19, 2012. On May 8, 2013, the media announced that the name of the new stadium would be Levi's Stadium. The stadium opened on July 17, 2014, in time for the 2014 NFL season. The 49ers christened their new home a month after it opened.
2017 NFL season
The Los Angeles teams were not the only ones with visible attendance problems. The San Francisco 49ers reported a Week 3 attendance total that exceeded the capacity of Levi's Stadium, even as wide swaths of empty seats were visible in the stadium throughout the game. This followed similar sparse attendance for the 49ers' home opener. Even the Dallas Cowboys, a team whose fan base is among the largest in the United States, played their week 13 "Thursday Night Football" game in front of a half-empty AT&T Stadium. The lifting of the league's blackout policy was cited as one factor in the decline in ticket sales, as viewers would rather watch from the comfort of their homes, especially when weather conditions were less than ideal. At a Buffalo Bills/Indianapolis Colts game held in blinding lake-effect snow on December 10, scalpers said they had not sold any tickets, an extreme rarity. Indeed, a majority of television sets in all Western New York were tuned into some portion of the game, the highest viewership for a non-Super Bowl NFL game in the region since record-keeping began.This was the fourth season under the current broadcast contracts with ESPN, CBS, Fox, and NBC. This included "cross-flexing" (switching) Sunday Afternoon games between CBS and Fox before or during the season (regardless of the conference of the visiting team). NBC continued to air "Sunday Night Football", the annual Kickoff game, and the primetime Thanksgiving game, and broadcast Super Bowl LII. ESPN continued to air "Monday Night Football" and the Pro Bowl. This also was the second and final year of the current "Thursday Night Football" contract with CBS, NBC, and NFL Network.