San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers are a professional American football team located in the San Francisco Bay Area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The team currently plays its home games at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, located southeast of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon Valley. Since 1988, the 49ers have been headquartered in Santa Clara.
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.