Matt Damon in Dunkin’s Super Bowl ad Tribune Content Agency
On Sunday, Feb. 11, the National Football League hosted the 58th annual Super Bowl at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nev. The game, which was between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, streamed from 5:30 p.m. Central Standard Time until 9:14 p.m.
Despite running for three hours and 44 minutes, there were only 74 minutes of actual playing time, meaning that the game itself only made up about one-third of the entire Super Bowl event.
Thirteen of the extra 150 minutes of the Super Bowl that didn’t show the actual game were dedicated to the one part many Americans watch the game for: the beloved halftime show.
Another non-football related aspect of the Super Bowl that viewers tune in for are the famous Super Bowl advertisements. For the event, CBS does not stream the same ads that are normally aired on the network. Instead, more sophisticated, cinematic ones are filmed to be shown only on the night of the championship game.
The commercials are usually comical or satirical, and often feature cameos from different famous people. The Super Bowl ads are a huge factor in why so many non-football fans enjoy watching the game every year.
This year, the widely acclaimed Super Bowl advertisements along with the other extra pieces of entertainment all amounted to over two hours of footage, making the non-football related content well over twice as long as the actual game.
Though these extra aspects give life to the Super Bowl and make it more marketable, it can more than reasonably be viewed as more about creating a show for everyone to watch than being about the two final teams competing for the championship.
A fitting term to describe the Super Bowl would be an event rather than a game. It is unlike any other professional sports championships; there are no advertisements made specially to be aired at the World Series, nor are those who couldn’t care less about basketball ecstatic to host or attend parties on the night of the NBA championship game.
The unique fanaticism surrounding the Super Bowl even causes many businesses across the United States to adjust their hours to fit the schedule of the event. According to an article by Fox 4 Kansas City, many Kansas City businesses closed early on the night of the event so that employees could go home to experience the event live on television.
Many businesses also prepare in advance for Super Bowl Sunday; a Bloomington, Illinois restaurant owner claims his restaurant usually expects to make four or five times the amount of chicken wings they make in a normal weekend on the weekend of the long-awaited Super Bowl.
The sensationalized nature of Super Bowl Sunday has even proven to be quite dangerous due to the fact that so many consume copious amounts of alcohol on the day of the event; according to a study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 46% of the 244 reported deaths due to traffic collisions during the 12-hour period on five Super Bowl Sundays that were studied were alcohol-related.
It is undeniable that the whole idea of the Super Bowl has been warped from a match to determine the best team in professional football, to a day in which businesses across the nation, both big and small, use it to make more money.
While I understand that consumerism is what keeps the world running, the entire purpose of the Super Bowl has been completely lost to it. The Super Bowl has undeniably become a cash grab for big celebrities and businesses.
The fact that so many people who wouldn’t otherwise care about football anxiously await Super Bowl Sunday clearly displays how easily manipulated we are as a society. Many Americans spend unnecessary amounts of money to throw Super Bowl parties and only watch the game to see the halftime show or the many advertisements.