Editorial | The Super Bowl is too big of a spectacle
Photo Courtesy of Adobe Stock
This is the second edition of a weekly opinion article by The Panther’s sports editor Caleb Otte, delving into the hottest topics and debates in world sports.
My family would go to church on Super Bowl Sunday when I was a kid. There would be three collection plates out for the congregation to donate money into. Two of them had the teams competing in that year's game, and you’d put cash in for whichever one you supported or thought would win. The third one simply said, “commercials.”
There are four things that irk me about the current state of the NFL’s biggest game. The ads, how much coverage there is of the celebrities simply attending, ticket prices and insane sports gambling prop bets. All of these take away from the sport itself.
Twenty-four percent of the Super Bowl broadcast is dedicated to advertisements, according to CBS Sports.
Football is a game that inherently lends itself to more commercial breaks, and the NFL has capitalized on that. The bottom line for the league is their bottom line. A 30-second advertisement slot during the game cost $8 million this year, and that is only expected to rise in 2026.
Companies have also started teasing their Super Bowl ads a week before the game. It’s like a movie premiere. Stella Artois released a preview of their David Beckham commercial, centered around the intrigue of his long-lost brother. The big reveal ended up being Matt Damon, playing a character.
What are we doing here? Why are we analyzing if the commercials are good or not? The commercials are supposed to suck. When, other than the Super Bowl, do people avoid hitting mute during the ads?
In the hours leading up to the game, there were as many social media posts about which famous people were attending the game as content about the teams and players. Adam Sandler, Paul Rudd, Livvy Dunne and Paul Skenes, Jay-Z, Druski and, of course, Taylor Swift were all seen on the official NFL Instagram page. Scattered around them were pictures of Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes warming up, but easily the most liked post of the night was of international soccer star Lionel Messi’s arrival to the game.
I didn’t see posts about super fans for either the Kansas City Chiefs or Philadelphia Eagles. My feed wasn’t full of a fervent crowd, anxious to see their teams compete for the ultimate glory. Just famous people, who can easily afford their box seats.
No normal person can afford to go to the game. As of 2023, the average ticket cost in the regular season was $377 according to USA Today. That is pretty steep, but it pales in comparison to even the cheapest Super Bowl price. In the highest rows of the upper level in the Caesars Superdome, they were priced at around $3,000.
Yes, Super Bowl tickets should cost more than regular season tickets. But eight times more? For the worst seat in the house? C’mon.
There were thousands, if not millions, of fans who stayed home and still drained their bank accounts. It is estimated that almost $1.4 billion was bet on the Super Bowl. A lot of the action is on ridiculous prop bets that have essentially nothing to do with the game itself. Gamblers can put money on the outcome of the coin flip, how long the national anthem will last and what color Gatorade will be dumped on the winning coach among other football-adjacent picks.
If we ignore how sports gambling creates an addiction, and can ruin lives, this is still stupid. People are putting money down on random occurrences. Why not bet on who will win, or which quarterback will throw more touchdowns? The fun of betting is supposed to be that, if you aren’t a fan of either team, you still have a small stake in the game for a rooting interest. Other bets are degenerate fodder.
We shouldn’t ignore how perverse gambling is, though. It is one of a few socially accepted addictions, along with alcoholism and smoking. During NFL games all season there are ads for sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings. When the Super Bowl rolls around, it isn’t just the pinnacle of the season for football fans but also for gamblers.
I sound like a scrooge right now, popping the basketballs of little children while telling them Santa isn’t real, but this is where we’re at.
It’s clear that the Super Bowl is an increasingly corporate and celebrity driven event. It’s reflective of a society that has placed profit over all else. There are no other sporting events that have fallen this far off the capitalist deep-end.
The FIFA World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world. The final match drew 1.5 billion viewers in 2022. And yet, the focus is only on the game at hand. People don’t make a big deal out of the commercials. The only celebrities who get attention are the soccer stars on the pitch. They do a little ceremony before the match, but the sport takes center stage. The most expensive tickets for the game cost just over $1,600. While that is a lofty price, it's only half that of the cheapest Super Bowl ticket.
The World Cup only comes around every four years, and yet they allow soccer to be the spectacle; not commercials or celebrities.
Like finding a needle in a haystack, if you look hard enough you will find a football game amongst the fanfare. One between uber-talented quarterbacks, genius head coaches and star-studded supporting casts. You will see the culmination of lifelong dreams for two sets of players. You will witness the dichotomy between the joy of winning and the utter heartbreak of losing. You will see fans forgetting all their worries for one night as they celebrate their team’s victory.
Forget the groupthink, uninspired advertisements. Forget what actor or singer is at the game. Focus on what the Super Bowl was originally intended to be: 11 men on either side of the ball, putting both their mental and physical strength to the test, in a matchup of the two most talented teams of the season.
This is the perspective of a diehard sports fan. For the casual viewer, or even somebody who doesn’t follow the NFL, this spectacle may be exactly what they are after. 127 million viewers tuned in for the game. The market isn’t going away for the league, it’s continually growing and shifting. I just wish the game gave more back to the people who care the most about it.
