Tech companies are donating millions to the 50th Super Bowl game

Super Bowl 50 is still a ways away. But the money is already flowing in. The host committee that’s been tasked with bringing the National Football League’s biggest event — and the most-watched television spectacle in the United States — to the San Francisco 49ers’ new stadium in Santa Clara announced that it had raised $40 million toward that end. Tech companies have pitched in big to bring the game to Silicon Valley, with Yahoo, Google, Apple and Intel all pledging $2 million in “cash and other services,” according to reports.

Apple has joined with some of its allies and rivals over a common cause: bringing the 50th Super Bowl football game to the new Santa Clara Stadium in 2016. Apple, Google, Gap, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Seagate, Virgin America and Yahoo have all pledged $2 million to help offset the public costs of the event, such as security and youth groups, to alleviate the burden on taxpayers. By coincidence, 2016 is also the year Apple expects to complete its new, $5 billion headquarters, known as “Campus 2.” Apple’s involvement in the civic fundraising effort, which has thus far raised some $25 million over its initial $5 million goal, does not necessarily portend the presence of a commercial from the iPhone maker — still remembered for its ground-breaking ad from the 1984 Super Bowl that heralded the Mac. Less well-remembered was a poor follow-up commercial called “Lemmings” that aired during the 1985 Super Bowl, which was seen as insulting to potential business customers.