The Super Bowl: A Sporting Spectacle or a Corporate Concern?

The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event here in America. An estimated 91 million viewers watched the 2006 national championship, which also means that the business opportunity it provides is vast. Unfortunately however, critics argue this has transformed the event into a more of a corporate affair, instead of one that caters to sports fans. It appears to have become a business junket in which sponsors and clients occupy many seats. There are about 70,000 seats at the February 4 game, but the NFL is stringently controlling distribution. An article from the Los Angeles Times specified that, “the Bears and Colts each receive 17.5% of the tickets, while the host Miami Dolphins distribute 5%. The remaining NFL teams split 34.8% of the tickets and the league held back 25.2% for its sponsors, VIPs and other lucky souls.”

The NFL supplied tickets costing $600-700 at face value. The statistics aforementioned reflect that these tickets which are virtually impossible to find. The next sources of these sacred seats are secondary ticket markets wherein tickets are extravagantly expensive. Prices on StubHub, a San Francisco based online ticket retailer, “ranged from $3,000 for a seat in the corner of Miami's Dolphin Stadium", which is shown on the right, "to $170,593 for a 16-person private suite.” Clearly, Super Bowl tickets are not for the average aficionado. Football fanatics are willing to go to all sorts of extremes in order to get their hands on ticket. According to Sports Illustrated, some fans have agreed to exchange sexual favors, strip-club memberships, personal ad space (pregnant belly), and HD plasma screen televisions in order to get a hold of a pair of tickets ofcourse.

Due to high spectatorship of the national football championship, companies have been attracted to shell out large sums of money for airtime further contributing to the corporate atmosphere of the Super Bowl. Other than for the spectacular displays of football prowess between the nation’s two top teams, the event has come to be known for another craze - commercials. Interestingly, this year several of the commercials will be user generated. With the phenomenon of 'youtubization' or the swell in user generated media , a few companies decided to incorporate the public into their advertisement scheme as it would not only harvest numerous ideas with less work, but also promote their product amongst contestants. While General Motors chose to use an advertisement idea from contestants, Doritos took an even larger risk and will use the actual commercial, produced by the contender, as displayed on the left. In fact, it costs a record breaking $2.6 million dollars for a 30 second slot this year. That is $86,666 a second. As the most highly viewed show in America, firms are aware that the reach of these commercials is immense. Although it is not always worth the enormous investment, for the most part companies found it to be highly profitable.

Indeed there are all sorts of revenue streams and corporate transactions for enterprises during Super Bowl season. At the end of the day however, it boils down to the fans appreciation and passion for the sport of football. According to former USC safety and recent Colts recruit Scott Ware, “significant amounts of money are spent on commercials during the Super Bowl because it is the top and most watched sporting event. It stems from a large fan base, so when taking this into consideration, it is still a sporting event.” Obviously, if not for the support and spectatorship of the fans, none of these businesses would even think of spending millions on air time. The Sunday that the sports program airs has turned into an unofficial American holiday partly because all across the country, citizens are glued to their TV screens. Such a large number of fans are tuned in, that as they rush to the bathroom "before the Super Bowl's second-half kickoff, they'll flush enough water to fall over the Niagara Falls for 39 minutes." The Super Bowl and athletics in general is sustained and driven by fans. Although it has become increasingly business oriented, ultimately, the Super Bowl is a sports spectacle which showcases the incredible athleticism possessed by the gladiators of our era, in the game of football.