The Kansas City Chiefs will play the San Francisco 49ers in the LVIII Super Bowl in Paradise, Nev., this Suday. The game is a rematch from four years ago, when the same two teams faced off in Miami Gardens, Fla. That year, the Chief took home the trophy, as they did in 2023 and back in 1970s. Both teams are among the top competitors in the championship, with the Kansas City Chiefs having competed six times - also in 2021 and 1967 - and the San Francisco 49ers even eight times between 1982 and 2024.
Six Super Bowl appearances give the Chiefs more Super Bowl clout than the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants. Three wins put them on the same level as the Washington Commanders or the Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders, with both teams needing just as many tries to take home three trophies. At eight appearances, the San Francisco 49ers competed as many times as the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Dallas Cowboys and the Denver Broncos and can look back on a quite a good track record in terms of wins.
There are still four teams - the Cleveland Browns, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Detroit Lions and the Houston Texans - which have never played the Super Bowl, and 12 which have never won the game. Jacksonville and Houston only joined the competition in 1995 and 2002, respectively.
There is one more team, the New England Patriots, which have racked up the most Super Bowl appearances, according to statistics published by ESPN. Yet, the Patriots are among the teams with below average wins-to-participation ratios, with only six wins out of 11 Super Bowls played. The most unlucky teams among the Super Bowl participants are the Minnesota Vikings and the Buffalo Bills. They each played in the Super Bowl four times but failed to win any of those competitions.
