EastCoast Entertainment has a long-standing relationship with the Carolina Panthers. During the regular season, we provide entertainment for their Champions Village, South Lawn Village, club level, and Panther’s Lair hospitality areas. In January, when they won the division championship and it was determined that they would be headed to Super Bowl 50, the entire city of Charlotte was electric and I, a Panthers fan from Day 1, was ecstatic. Little did I know, how exciting the next couple of weeks were about to get.

I got the call from my Panthers organization contact on the Tuesday following their division win. There were two events Super Bowl weekend where they needed entertainment – an opening cocktail-esque reception for the players and their families on Friday and a post game party on Sunday for players, their families and the entire Panthers organization (Panthers owner, Jerry Richardson, generously paid for the entire staff to attend the Super Bowl.).

After some deliberation over the course of several days, my contact decided they wanted a quartet from Sol Fusion to play the Friday night reception and the full band to perform at what would hopefully turn into a Super Bowl Champions celebration after the game on Sunday. The quartet would fly to San Francisco on a chartered flight Friday morning and the rest of the band would fly out on Sunday morning.

Sol Fusion quartet boards the charted plane to Super Bowl 50.

On Saturday, the band had some free time to explore San Francisco. Super Bowl 50 statues were placed throughout the city making perfect stops for photo ops.

The quartet showing some Panther pride at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Sunday was all business. The rest of the band arrived around noon and made their way to the hotel to freshen up before heading to the San Jose Convention Center for sound check.

The agenda for the Post Super Bowl party.

The Super Bowl started at 3:30pm PST and the band kept up with what was going down on the field from their phones and through various people at the convention center. After sound check was completed, they were able to watch much of the game from their hotel which was connected to the convention center. As the game progressed, uncertainty crept in about how the night’s event might go.

“We were sitting there watching the last quarter of the game and just thought to ourselves, Oh man,” says Sol Fusion saxophone player, Harvey Cummings. “Are people even going to want to party? We knew we had our work cut out for us if the Panthers lost the game, but we also knew that we would pull out all the stops to make sure that every single person in the room had a great time.”

The Panthers didn’t win, but you would never have known it from the after party. The event went on as planned and turned into an epic celebration of one heck of a season. Thank you Carolina Panthers for all the fun this season both on and off the field!  #KeepPounding

Sol Fusion before hitting the stage at the Carolina Panthers post-Super Bowl party.

Vocalist, LaVita Hill, with Panthers cornerback, Josh Norman.