The Super Bowl is one of the marquee sports events on the planet. It is estimated that over 200 million people tune in to watch the game from all corners of the globe. The Super Bowl is synonymous with American culture on an international scale. Many casual fans and even non-fans tune in to the event due to the magnitude of the event and the additional bonuses that turn it into such a spectacle.
There are fan parks around the stadium before the game, and all the biggest news outlets make sure they’re in attendance. Not to mention the wealth of A-list celebrities who try and land the hottest ticket in town. Last year, some of the A-listers in attendance included Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Will Ferrell, Christina Aguilera and Mark Wahlberg. So, if you were looking to place a wager on the NFL, especially in the first week of the season, you might find that NFL week 1 odds may not reflect the team’s league position the previous year.
The main focal point of the entertainment is the halftime show. This is always a big talking point of the event and will usually rake in millions more viewers online and grab international headlines. Michael Jackson, The Weeknd and Coldplay are some of the acts that have played in the halftime show. The last Super Bowl show included Eminem, Dr. Dre, Mary J Blige, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar.
This is a good starting point for our first fascinating fact. The most watched Super Bowl halftime show took place in 2015 when Katy Perry performed. A staggering 118.5 million people tuned in to watch the spectacle, and the number has not been bettered since. A couple of years later, Lady Gaga almost took this title, but she fell just short of Katy Perry’s ratings with 117.5 million people watching her perform such hits as Poker Face and Bad Romance.
Another fascinating fact about the Super Bowl is that the two teams with the most wins are tied with six titles each. One team is the New England Patriots and the other is the Pittsburgh Steelers. The most recent Super Bowl winners were the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. When a team wins the Super Bowl, they have the last pick in the NFL draft the following year. This increases competition and ensures the weaker teams do not fall behind. The teams who fall down the rankings have the opportunity to pick the better players in the draft at the start of the new season.
The third fascinating fact about the Super Bowl is its enormous advertising revenue during the halftime show. This slot is considered a premium advertising space for the biggest businesses in the world. The average 30-second halftime Super Bowl commercial costs business $3.5m. While this figure seems like an eye-watering amount, the exposure a business can get for its new brand or product is well worth it from a risk management perspective. If you can afford it, that is. There are plenty of other sports that Americans enjoy, as well as the NFL. However, the Super Bowl is generally considered the biggest sporting event on the American sporting calendar.
Another fascinating fact is that the Super Bowl has been taking place for over half a century. The first Super Bowl took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Colosseum on January 15th, 1967. The Kansas City Chiefs took on the Green Bay Packers, with the latter coming out victorious. The Green Bay Packers have lifted the Superbowl trophy four times, while the Kansas City Chiefs have lifted the trophy twice.
The penultimate fact ties into the previous fact. Believe it or not, the first tickets for the Super Bowl were sold for $12. You’d be lucky if that got you a drink and a hotdog at halftime in this day and age. The average cost of a Super Bowl ticket is now in the thousands of dollars, with people from all over the globe wanting to get a taste of the spectacle unfolding live. The value of Super Bowl tickets is staggering, with some people spending huge amounts of money to sit in the front rows. The highest price for a single ticket was quoted as $53,350 for a ticket seated directly behind one of the team’s benches.
The final fact we have for you is that the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the Super Bowl has always been a player on the winning team, apart from on one occasion. This was during the 1971 Super Bowl when Chuck Howley was named the MVP despite being on the losing Dallas Cowboys team.
