There isn't a single event which incites as much excitement each year as the Super Bowl. 111 million people in America alone watched the Super Bowl last year. That's roughly the same number of people that voted in 2012 (about 118 million if you’re curious). Almost as many people care about the outcome of a football game than can be bothered to decide the foreseeable future of the country. It’s not just men either as the gender gap between viewers now hovers at about 4%. With so much of our time invested in one event it’s not surprising that the Super Bowl isn’t just some game; the Super Bowl influences everything from our economy to our judgment and our health.
1. Those Super Bowl ads can make or break your company-
I guarantee everyone reading this knows at least one jackass who watches the Super Bowl every year saying the same bullshit line "I just watched it for the commercials." While to me that sounds like announcing you bought a Big Mac for the pickles, the numbers seem to support it. Last year companies spent over 200 million dollars on commercials alone at a going rate of 4 million per 30 seconds spot. The Super Bowl is so sacred most companies can’t even say or print the word “Super Bowl” without getting sued. They have to settle for calling it the “Big game” as if the word “Super Bowl” would invoke some kind of evil spirit if it fell into the wrong hands.
“I dare you say it!”
Each year there is more and more time allotted to advertising to properly capitalize on all that sweet, sweet, advertising revenue. This year there will be 48 minutes of commercials during the game. That sounds pretty fair, it's a sixty minute game right? Wrong. Take into account how much of the game is spent milling around between plays while the clock runs down and you are left with a little less than 12 minutes of actual game play. That’s 40 million dollars spent per minute of real football.
With all that money being spent on commercials, one would think these companies must be getting tons of return on their advertising dollars. You'd think so, but that's not what the research says. While some companies like E*TRADE have seen huge increases in traffic every year following their yearly ad, it hasn’t always translated into profits. E*TRADE has advertised in 6 of the last 10 Super Bowls, yet had seen its stock drop 91% since 2002. In fact, take in this staggering statistic: 43% of the dot.com companies who advertised during Super Bowl XXXIV in the year 2000 were out of business within a little more than a year.
Remember us? Yeah didn’t think so.
In today’s market even more is on the line. A single Super Bowl advertisement will be over 10% of the yearly advertising budget for almost 1/5 of companies advertising during the game .With social media, millions of people will be tweeting and Facebooking their reactions to those valuable ads in real time. The best of those expensive ads will then be viewed millions and millions of times on YouTube providing additional exposure. Even a great ad with lots of exposure doesn't always mean a profit will be made. Take Best Buy for example. They began advertising in the Super Bowl three years ago with monster minute long ads with huge guest appearances. During those 3 years Best Buy's stock has dropped from its high of $43 a share in ‘09 to $11 a share last month. This is the financial year that could make or break the company, yet instead of lowering prices they are paying a huge sum for a minute long ad staring Amy Poehler. Will that be money well spent, or will it prove to be a poor investment? We'll see.
2. American love to gamble (and we usually lose).
The Dallas News estimated that almost half of American adults wagered on the Super Bowl in one way or another last year. Just 1% of that money changed hands in Vegas casinos, who still handled nearly 90 million dollars in bets last year. The total amount wagered likely reached over 8 billion dollars when you include online sport betting, illicit gambling, and social gambling-such as office pools.
Big Bird is pretty handy with a pool cue.
In an age where just about anyone with a credit card can stake their money through online sports booking accounts, the big game means big bucks. Online sports booking has changed the image of betting from sketchy bookies hanging out in smoky dive bars, to simple online transactions. These online bets take place in a legal grey area rather than being explicitly illegal in most states, and as a result sports booking has attracted a much younger clientele. Now any fresh faced college kid with student loans and habitual gamblers with their kids’ college funds both have the opportunity to wake up on Monday morning filled with debt and regret.
Maybe they’ll get a scholarship. Problem solved.
It's not just the outcome we bet on either. Propositions range from the length of the national anthem to the score of The Puppy Bowl. With all the gambling going on, its more like we're going to our own personal casino and hopefully a football game breaks out while we're there. Of course, the house always wins. Well almost always. In the entire span for which records have been kept the Vegas casinos have only suffered a net loss twice since 1980, most recently during the 2008 Super Bowl in which the Giants upset the then undefeated New England Patriots. Last year marked the biggest year yet for bookmakers pulling in over 93 million in Vegas alone.
3. No matter what we’re all going to get really fat.
If there’s one thing we Americans like it’s a party. As a country we have enough money that most of us get a party just for surviving the year. Certain cities and states are almost exclusively known for their parties and festivals. Name something that happens in South Dakota that isn’t about motorcycles, or try to picture New Orleans in your head. The Super Bowl is a lot like a Mardi Gras for the rest of the country, but without all the topless chicks. And in America when we party we chow down big time.
Okay maybe I take that back.
That shouldn’t be any surprise to anyone following the news. More than a third of Americans are now considered to be obese- more than any other country in the world and perhaps in history. We will spend more than 50 million dollars on food for Super Bowl Sunday, with almost all of that money being spent on things that kill us.
Either way 53 million pounds of this is too much.
The numbers are cartoonish. We’ll drink 325 million gallons of beer alone. To put that in perspective that’s enough to fill 493 Olympic sized swimming pools. Now I’m not entirely sure how big an Olympic sized swimming pool is but it sure sounds like a lot. Also we will eat about 28 million pounds of potato chips; enough to stretch 293 thousand miles placed end to end. That’s more than enough to get to the moon. Shockingly only 3% of the food eaten during the game can be considered healthy. One of the only fruits we eat during the Super bowl is the avocado, which happens to be one of the only fruits or vegetables containing cholesterol. It’s a good bet most of us won’t be feeling too great on Monday which is why, traditionally, anti-acids sales increase 20% the day after the game.
So just remember on Sunday while you're spending the day watching commercials, losing you car payment, and stuffing your face- There just might be a football game too.
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