The Black Eyed Peas confusing their image with the cast of Tron (photo courtesy of bittenandbound.com)
…we just make it out to be.
When I sat down to watch the Super Bowl, I was hoping for some type of scandal to provide something interesting for this post. Yes, Christina Aguilera butchered the National Anthem and the Black Eyed Peas probably would have benefited from some auto-tune, but neither were worthy of 500 words.
Despite the lack of scandal*, there was still the usual over-exaggerated hype in the days before the big game, allowing my PR mind to turn on. Most media outlets dub the game the biggest and most elite sporting event of the year.
But is it really?
While some would argue that I’m being just as un-American as Xtina by even thinking to question this, I have to wonder, is it the game itself that we love or is it everything else surrounding the game that makes it so special?
Though the media says it’s the mother of all sporting events, the Super Bowl is actually only one of the biggest, not thee biggest. In fact, in the United States, the biggest event is the Boston Marathon. Each year, more than 20,000 people run while around 500,000 watch. Despite it’s size, I bet few people could name the actual winners.
Aaron Rodgers says "yay, we won!" Or so I like to think (image via thirdage.com)
Thirty-two teams (53 players on each roster), 16 teams in each conference and 4 in each division of each conference, comprise the NFL. Two make it to the grand finale. Everyone could tell you Green Bay came away victorious in 2011, the Saints in 2010 and the Steelers in 2009. This year’s game featured the greatest enemies of Cleveland and Chicago. Browns fans became “Cheesheads” for the night, while Bears fans proudly waved Terrible Towels.
Whether you were a one-night only fan, a true fan or not a fan because you couldn’t even explain a first down, you probably hosted or attended some sort of Super Bowl party. For non-football fans, you were probably one of those that said “I don’t care about who wins, I just want to watch the commercials.”
Participation and viewership of the Super Bowl are far less than the Boston Marathon, but we can’t deny the relevance those three or so hours in our lives.
The following statistics from squidoo.com show how much really goes into all of the external fun:
- More than $55 million goes into food sales
- Eight million pounds of guacamole, 15,000 tons of chips and 4,000 tons of popcorn are consumed
- Antacid sales go up 20 % in the day following the big game
- Americans spend $237.2 million on soft drinks at grocery stores the week before the game
- Year after year, the Super Bowl beats out holiday parties as the biggest reason for Americans to host an at-home event
- Only on Thanksgiving do Americans consume more food at one time
- Besides New Years Eve, the Super Bowl is the biggest day for alcohol consumption
And how do we forget about the ads? This year, it’s been reported that the price of one Super Bowl ad was almost $3 million. Companies spend so much money on advertising because people want to see the ads, and maybe buy the product. Yet, how many businesses advertise in a Super Bowl time slot that don’t already bring in billions of dollars? To my knowledge, the last time up and coming businesses bought ad space was the year of the dot.com bust. While many reasons are behind the failure of some of these online corporations, I think part of it can be contributed to unnecessary advertising during the big game. The lesson from all that mess was never to try to mass market your ideas if you’re still a niche.
The Super Bowl is more than a game. It’s an opportunity for our culture to come together in the same way we do for holidays. Whether or not this is a display of American consumerism and invites criticism from other countries, it is one of the biggest ways PR and marketing professionals from a variety of backgrounds can capitalize on exposure. The average person probably doesn’t think about this, but then again, when do normal people think “oh good PR move.”
*There in fact was a scandal, with the overselling of seats. But we could debate that for days and I wouldn’t want to bore you with my rant 🙂
Sports PRspective 