Shortly after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers crushed the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday’s Super Bowl, fans took to the streets of Tampa to celebrate, and few, it appeared from videos of the crowds, were wearing masks, cementing concerns that the event would help spread the coronavirus.
In Ybor City, a part of Tampa known for its nightlife, a sea of people partied late into the night. It was not immediately clear whether any efforts had been made to disperse the crowd. A television reporter characterized the scene as “one massive dance floor.”
The scene of thousands of fans tightly packed into the city’s streets and outside Raymond James Stadium represented an alternate universe from the steady warnings by the nation’s top health officials about the risks of the Super Bowl becoming a super spreader event. It also came amid growing concerns that coronavirus variants have become more transmissible.
Inside the stadium, the home field of the Buccaneers that typically holds about 66,000 people, capacity had been limited to 22,000 spectators. The empty seats were filled with cardboard cutouts of fans who could not attend the game but paid $100 to have their photographs present.
Outside the stadium, there appeared to be far less of an emphasis on social distancing and wearing masks. Maskless fans in jerseys tailgated, waving Buccaneers flags and listening to music.
After the game, which Tampa won 31-9 over the Chiefs, last year’s champions, a group of fans surrounded a Kansas City team bus. Many people in that crowd did not appear to wearing masks. Officers on motorcycles cleared the crowd for the bus to be on its way.
