Inaccurate photos of Phoenix and State Farm stadium get roasted online ahead of Super Bowl LVII
PHOENIX (KPHO/Gray News) – With the nation’s eyes turning towards Arizona as Super Bowl LVll nears, Phoenix and State Farm Stadium in Glendale have taken center stage.
Unfortunately, some of the heavily edited depictions sent out by the City of Phoenix and the NFL of the valley have been ... well ... interesting.
Just before last Sunday’s NFL conference championship games were to begin, the NFL’s official Twitter account tweeted an image of the four starting quarterbacks looking towards State Farm Stadium, which will host the big game on Feb. 12.
For some reason, rather than being nestled at its real hometown of Glendale, the NFL’s image had the stadium situated at the Grand Canyon, just a mere 220 miles north of its actual location, nearly the distance between Washington, D.C., and New York City.
The official Grand Canyon National Park Twitter account quickly corrected the league.
But the social media gaffes were not isolated to those out-of-state.
After the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Cincinnati Bengals to punch their ticket to the Super Bowl, the official City of Phoenix Twitter account sent a tweet welcoming the team and their fans to “the Valley of the Sun.”
Yet rather than use any of the numerous beautiful photos of Phoenix, the city’s tweet contained an obviously heavily edited image that unleashed a slew of jokes and online mockery for its inaccuracies.
Among the eyebrow-raising choices made: Buildings aligned incorrectly, an apparent forest growing in the middle of Phoenix, a patch of a freeway with the signs facing the wrong way and a flag pole higher than the forest canopy, to name just a few.
It didn’t take long for Twitter users to unleash a firestorm of tweets pointing out the inaccuracies of the image depicting Arizona’s largest city. It wasn’t just online users grilling the City of Phoenix.
Maricopa County, home to both Phoenix and Glendale, couldn’t help adding its own cleverly designed image containing several tongue-in-cheek references.
The City of Phoenix sent KPHO the following statement about the image:
The City of Phoenix, like many institutions, uses photos and videos to showcase themselves in marketing opportunities. This photo in the tweet you asked about has been used for years by the City to highlight the beauty of what Phoenix has to offer. This composite and stylized photo was used with permission from Visit Phoenix for regular and special marketing events, such as the Final Four and Super Bowl.
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