San Francisco 49ers
The team was founded in 1946 as a charter member of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and joined the NFL in 1949 when the leagues merged. The 49ers were the first major league professional sports franchise based in San Francisco. The name "49ers" comes from the prospectors who arrived in Northern California in the 1849 Gold Rush. The team is legally and corporately registered as the San Francisco Forty Niners. The team began play at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco before moving across town to Candlestick Park in 1970 and then to Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara in 2014.
Candlestick Park
The NFL awarded Super Bowl XXXIII to Candlestick Park on November 2, 1994. Candlestick Park had planned to make major renovations in preparation for the game; when that did not happen, the NFL owners awarded Super Bowl XXXIII to the Miami area during their October 31, 1996 meeting in New Orleans.
In , the Giants moved to the new Pacific Bell Park (now called Oracle Park) in the China Basin neighborhood, leaving the 49ers as the sole professional sports team to use Candlestick. The final baseball game was played on September 30, 1999, against their long time rivals the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won 9–4. In that game, all nine Dodgers starters had at least one base hit, while the stadium's final home run came from Dodgers' right fielder Raúl Mondesí in the 6th inning. The National League rivalry between the Giants and Dodgers, one of the oldest and most hotly contested in the Major Leagues, dated back to when both teams were based in New York City. When first the Dodgers, then the Giants, moved to California in 1958, the rivalry continued unabated.