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15.05.2021 15:33:31
The event is free and the ticket reservation site opened at 1 p.m. Tuesday. However, the team confirmed early afternoon that the event is at capacity, with 15k tickets reserved. more
See full version: Free tickets for Lightning fan rally at Raymond James gone quickly
The event is free and the ticket reservation site opened at 1 p.m. Tuesday. However, the team confirmed early afternoon that the event is at capacity, with 15k tickets reserved. more
However, if you did miss out on the Raymond James rally, you can still catch the boat parade Wednesday evening at 5 p.m. at the Tampa Riverwalk.
The Tampa Bay Lightning are Stanley Cup champions! But if you were hoping to catch the fan rally at Raymond James Stadium, you may be out of luck.
Fans who didn't get into the queue instantly were unable to get tickets for the event. more
Which is why I enjoy that Tampa’s stadium is included in the rotation for big games like the Super Bowl. It’s not a sparkling vision of the future. Despite being built just 23 years ago, it is the NFL’s 11th-oldest stadium. And yet it still hosts the sport’s premier games every once in a while. This is the third Super Bowl that will be played at Raymond James—the most recent came in 2009, with Santonio Holmes making his title-winning catch opposite the pirate ship. The boat was also in the background when Clemson’s Hunter Renfrow reeled in his game-winning catch to win the 2017 College Football Playoff national championship game—you can see it right here in the opening shot of the broadcast. [links]
According to Greg Auman of The Athletic, a Buccaneers marketing executive named Rick McNerney came up with the idea to add the pirate ship to Raymond James Stadium—with the thought to put corporate sponsorship on the boat’s sails. But he had the idea in December 1997—about 16 months after construction on the stadium had already begun. Luckily, the venue was designed with big open concourses, leaving it with enough room and structural support to fit a 100-foot concrete boat. (For big games, like the Super Bowl, the concourses are filled with temporary seating—except, of course, for the boat, costing the stadium a few thousand seats for the biggest sporting events in the world.) About five months before their season opener in 1998, the Buccaneers approached Companies of Nassal, an Orlando business that builds attractions for Disney and Universal Studios. Nassal built the ship in 71 days, working around the clock. It cost $3 million. [links]
And then there’s the Buccaneers’ big-ass pirate ship. It’s not a real ship, for the record—it’s made of concrete, and would instantly sink to the bottom of Tampa Bay if it tried to set sail. The cannons on board are, thankfully, not real. The ship has six of them that shoot smoke, four that fire confetti, and two machines that make cannon noises after the Bucs score. These “concussion cannons” are loud enough to scare Cam Newton. more
But the ship will be stranger than ever for this Super Bowl. Because the Super Bowl is officially a neutral-site game, the NFL has decided to make it appear as if this is not a Buccaneers-specific pirate ship, but just a generic pirate ship that happens to be inside of the football stadium where the Bucs will play the Chiefs. The massive Buccaneer-logo sails have been replaced with Super Bowl LV sails, as happened at previous Tampa Super Bowls. And the cannons, which normally fire every time that the Buccaneers score, will not be allowed to fire during the game. The NFL released a statement confirming that the cannons will go off in the team’s pregame introductions and in the case of a Buccaneers win, but not after Buccaneers’ scores. (Like with other Super Bowls, the neutral-site stadium will attempt to replicate aspects of each team’s usual home introduction.)
Tampa’s history with pirates is somewhat murky. The city hosts the annual Gasparilla Pirate Festival, a parade that pays tribute to the legendary José Gaspar, who built a pirate kingdom on the Gulf coast of Florida in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Unfortunately, Gaspar probably never existed. He was likely made up in the early 1900s to justify the party. Most pirate stuff in the 1700s happened in the Caribbean—several movies were made about this, although they weren’t completely historically accurate. Pirate stuff probably did not happen around Tampa, which wasn’t settled by white people until the 1800s and thus wasn’t buzzing with ships to plunder. But the Gaspar story has stuck, and when Tampa got a professional football team in 1976, it was named after the city’s pirate legend. here
It makes sense that the NFL wants to provide a neutral site for its Super Bowl—but home-field advantage was more or less eliminated this year, with home teams winning only 49.8 percent of the time as fan attendance was limited during the coronavirus pandemic. And historically, the pirate ship hasn’t helped Tampa Bay establish a meaningful home-field edge: The Bucs are dead last all time in home winning percentage, having won just 46.5 percent of their games in Tampa. So the NFL doesn’t really need to neutralize the boat. Do we really think that Patrick Mahomes will be thrown off because of occasional loud noises after opposing scores?
EDMONTON, ALBERTA - SEPTEMBER 28: Zach Bogosian #24 of the Tampa Bay Lightning skates with the Stanley Cup following the series-winning victory over the Dallas Stars in Game Six of the 2020 NHL Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Place on September 28, 2020 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
EDMONTON, ALBERTA - SEPTEMBER 28: Scott Wedgewood #29 of the Tampa Bay Lightning skates with the Stanley Cup following the series-winning victory over the Dallas Stars in Game Six of the 2020 NHL Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Place on September 28, 2020 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) [links]
EDMONTON, ALBERTA - SEPTEMBER 28: Brayden Point #21 of the Tampa Bay Lightning celebrates after scoring a goal against the Dallas Stars during the first period in Game Six of the 2020 NHL Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Place on September 28, 2020 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
EDMONTON, ALBERTA - SEPTEMBER 28: The Tampa Bay Lightning celebrate following the series-winning 2-0 victory over the Dallas Stars in Game Six of the 2020 NHL Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Place on September 28, 2020 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) more
EDMONTON, ALBERTA - SEPTEMBER 28: Nikita Kucherov #86 and Steven Stamkos #91 of the Tampa Bay Lightning celebrate following the series-winning victory over the Dallas Stars in Game Six of the 2020 NHL Stanley Cup Final at Rogers Place on September 28, 2020 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) here
EDMONTON, ALBERTA - SEPTEMBER 28: Ondrej Palat #18 of the Tampa Bay Lightning shares smelling salts with Anthony Cirelli #71 prior to Game Six of the 2020 NHL Stanley Cup Final against the Dallas Stars at Rogers Place on September 28, 2020 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
“The Stanley Cup is once again coming home to Tampa, and we could not be more proud of the Tampa Bay Lightning for embodying the resilient, fighting spirit of the Tampa Bay community and for bringing the Cup home,” Tampa Bay mayor Jane Castor said.
“Despite every challenge this past year, Tampa continues to ensure that our comeback is even greater than any setback. Thank you to our team for working hard, playing hard, and giving our community something to celebrate. We cannot wait for Stanley to get than tan.” more
The City of Tampa has released their plans for celebrating the Lightning’s winning of the 2020 Stanley Cup. According to the Tampa Bay Times, fans wanting to celebrate the Lightning’s Stanley Cup championship can do so Wednesday at socially distanced events along the Tampa Riverwalk and at Raymond James Stadium.
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