Super Bowl

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by David E. Woodard

To demonstrate the serious connection between advertising and the Super Bowl, one need look no further than Anheuser-Busch's "Bud Bowl," which has been a part of Super Bowl television broadcasts since 1989. The Bud Bowl is a fictitious football game, played out in expensive commercial spots, between animated beer bottles of Budweiser and Budweiser Light. The Bud Bowl employs real announcers and millions of dollars are spent to show these beer bottles running up and down the field attempting to score touchdowns. But the key to the Bud Bowl is Anheuser-Busch's promotions, which begin months before the game itself at hundreds of retail outlets. The beer company offers thousands of prizes that are tied into these advertising spots at the Super Bowl. Because of the advertising and prize giveaways, the final score of the Bud Bowl has become more important to the American television viewer than the results of the Super Bowl. Anheuser-Busch even set up a toll free number so potential prize winners could call and find out the final score of the Bud Bowl.

By 1999, 30-second Super Bowl advertising spots were selling for well over $1 million. Yet the evidence indicates that those sums are well worth the price for American corporate advertisers. In 1991, the Gillette Company used the Super Bowl to introduce its new Sensor razor. Gillette spent over $3 million on Super Bowl advertising to reach their male audience. By focusing its ads on Super Bowl Sunday, Gillette sold out its Sensor inventory through February and March following the broadcast, and the company was able to increase its market share by 35 percent in 1991. Evidence gathered by writer Phil Schaaf for his book Sports Marketing indicated that 66 percent of people tested recall Super Bowl commercials.

Money and corporate infiltration of the Super Bowl has also influenced the type of fans that attend the January event. In a sport that caters to the "average" fan during the regular season, few of those ordinary team boosters will ever have the opportunity to see a Super Bowl. Tickets are not sold to the general public--most go to corporate sponsors, celebrities, National Football League owners and officials, other players, and news organizations. In fact, during Super Bowl XXIX, 646 news organizations and 407 international media representatives were given Super Bowl credentials. The number of journalists working at the Super Bowl for these newsgroups totaled 2846. An actual statistical breakdown of fans who attends a Super Bowl shows the following: 35 percent attend on corporate expense accounts; 33 percent earn more than $100,000 annually; 27 percent own their own company; 25 percent are corporate officers; and 22 percent sit on corporate boards of directors. So the look of a Super Bowl is far different from the look of a football game on a regular Sunday in October or November.

But a Super Bowl does brings in a great deal of money to a host city. It is estimated that the Phoenix metropolitan area brought in $187 million when it hosted the Super Bowl. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the 1991 Super Bowl, 2,000 jobs were created for that event. All but the first Super Bowl has been a sellout, even though the cheapest tickets at the 1999 game sold for just over $250. Scalpers, or illegal ticket brokers, generally get four times that much for a Super Bowl ticket. Tim Green, a former professional football player, wrote in his book The Dark Side of the Game that, "January is when the big money really starts to drop." Green is referring to the legal and illegal betting that accompanies the Super Bowl. The game is the most gambled on sporting event in the United States. A person can lay a wager on just about any facet of the game: the first quarter score, which team will score first, which running back will get the most yards, the total score, or how many yards a particular quarterback will throw for. Between $35 and $60 million in legal gambling goes on for each Super Bowl game--illegal estimates are much higher.