One of the biggest and most celebrated days in the American calendar is the Super Bowl. People wish that the Super Bowl becomes a National holiday due to the fact that it’s held on a Sunday. People travel great distances to make it to the venue of the final game.
In this blog we are going to investigate the Super Bowl history, how it all started and its evolution to the great spectacle that we are so used to see nowadays. Visit LV BET Sports Blog to check out more interesting blogs on related subjects and to keep updated with the latest betting guides.
What is the Super Bowl for Americans
Some Americans might see the Super Bowl as the perfect representation of what the country is all about and it’s all celebrated in one day – Super Bowl Sunday. The Super Bowl is quintessential America since it represents all that is fun, good, happy and most of all competitive which is why this game decides the National Football League winners. It’s an occasion for all the family and friends to get together, eat, drink, have a good time and watch the best action provided by the NFL World Championship game.
Americans are famous for throwing the biggest entertainment parties, and for the annual championship game, they surely bring their A game. A traditional game that knows its inception in 1920, when the NFL successfully fended off several rival leagues – NFL encountered its most serious competitor when the American Football League was formed.
Why Super Bowl?
The game was originally called, ”AFL-NFL Championship game” but in 1966 the Kansas City Star quoted Clark Hunt, chairman of the Kansas City Chiefs, discussing the naming of this event and he stated that ”the Super Bowl – that’s my term for the championship game between the two leagues”, and the media caught on and it gained popularity. Along the years, there were plenty of suggestions to rival Super Bowl but they never caught on and people preferred Hunt’s recommendation. Some of the suggested titles for this Championship game were; Merger Bowl, The Game, Super Week, Super Teams, Super Sunday amongst others. Super Bowl became the official name at the beginning of the third annual game.
Pre-game ceremonies
As one might have gathered from the first half of this blog, the Super Bowl is a big thing in America. Like other major sporting events such as Formula 1, World Cup finals and others, there are certain formalities that need to be respected before the Super Bowl games. These formalities are done in this order:
- Presentation of the Most Valuable Players
- ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’
- Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award presentation
- ”America the Beautiful” (a patriotic American song)
- Presentation of the Colors
- ”The Star-Spangled Banner”(the national anthem of the USA) followed by flyover
- Coin Toss
Super Bowl Halftime Show
The Halftime show is one of the most popular segments that Europeans are mainly attracted to as they feature some of the biggest stars of the moment. The idea of having a halftime show stemmed from the early beginnings of this game, but as its popularity increased over the years, organisers ditched the marching bands from local colleges or high schools for popular singers. Unlike other games in the regular season or in playoff games, thirty minutes are allocated for the Super Bowl half time.
A lof of big names have headlined over the years but few have had the impact of Whitney Houston’s Super Bowl appearance when she performed the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, during the Gulf War, which had long been regarded as one of the best renditions of the anthem in history. Other shows that have been remembered (for the wrong reasons) were the ones of Super Bowl XXXVIII which attracted great amounts of controversy. The show was done by Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson; people loved the music and the entertainment but an incident happened at the end of the show when Justin Timberlake, in a pre-meditated stunt, removed a piece of Janet Jackson’s top, briefly exposing her chest, before the broadcast quickly cut away. This incident led to huge fines issued by the FCC and, consequently, MTV was banned by the NFL from producing the Super Bowl halftime show in the future.
Over the following years, the NFL’s board opted to go for singular veteran acts, such as Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. This practice ended at Super Bowl XLV, which returned to using current pop acts such as The Black Eyed Peas, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga.
Television ratings and viewership
In America the Super Bowl is easily the most viewed annual sporting event and it has now become a prominent event around the world. The only other annual event that gathers more viewers is the UEFA Champions League final. The game tends to have a high Nielsen television rating, which is usually around 40 rating and 60 shares. This translates that, on average, more than 100 million people from the United States alone are tuned into the Super Bowl at any given moment.
Viewership numbers across the years have been lopsided, with many figures quoting people who are able to watch the game rather than actual viewers. NFL has claimed that the Super Bowl has a potential worldwide audience of around one billion people in over 200 countries, which is only accounting who can view the game.
Together with high amounts of people viewing this game, big companies try to get on the act with key airtime. Famous Super Bowl commercials include the 1984 Apple’s Macintosh computer, the Budweiser ”Bud Bowl” campaign and the dot-com ads aired during Super Bowl XXXIV. Having such a high television rating drives up the prices for these key commercials, and some are estimated to cost around $7 million for a thirty second spot during Super Bowl LVI.
Super Bowl Winners
The New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers are tied with a record six Super Bowl wins. The Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers have five victories each, while the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants have four. Fourteen other NFL franchises have won at least one Super Bowl over the years. The New England Patriots own the record for most Super Bowl appearances with a total of 11, The Cowboys, Steelers, and Denver Broncos are tied for second with eight appearances apiece.
Bill Belichick owns the record for the most Super Bowl wins (eight) and appearances (12) — some as a member of the coaching staff and some as a player. The very popular figure in American Football, Tom Brady has the most Super Bowl starts with ten and wins as a player with seven, while Charles Haley has the second-most wins among players with five.
Who won the Super Bowl 2022?
Super Bowl LVI was played to determine the champion of the NFL for the 2021 season. The NFC champion Los Angeles Rams defeated the AFC champions Cincinnati Bengals 23-20. The game was played at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, the home stadium of the Rams.
A lot of doubts surrounded this Super Bowl due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which threatened people’s safety. In January, it was confirmed by the NFL that the game would remain at the stadium and that all should continue as usual. This was not the case the previous year when the seating capacity was reduced to just 25,000. Super Bowl LV was the first super bowl that had a low turnout, even in terms of viewership when compared to recent events.
Super Bowl LVI lived up to the hype as the halftime show was widely praised. Headlining were Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J Blige and Kendrick Lamar. Some critics have mentioned that Kendrick Lamar deserved his own full-length performance.
Super Bowl Locations
The Super Bowl game has been held in some of the best stadiums in America. As of Super Bowl LVI, 29 of 56 Super Bowls have been played in three metropolitan areas: the Greater Miami area, New Orleans and the Greater Los Angeles area. In NFL history, no region has ever hosted a Super Bowl without having an active NFL franchise and the presence of an NFL team. Having such a presence has become a requirement for bidding on the game. For instance, Los Angeles has been a seven-time host city, with its most recent being Super Bowl XXVII in 1993, it did not host one since the departure of both its NFL teams in 1995 until the Los Angeles Rams and the Chargers rejoined back to Los Angeles in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
To date, only two lucky teams have qualified for a Super Bowl at their home stadiums: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who won Super Bowl LV hosted at Raymond James Stadium, and the 2021 Los Angeles Rams the following season, who won Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium. Before that, the closest any team had come to accomplish this feat was the Minnesota Vikings, who reached the NFC Championship game but lost to the Eagles. In this instance, the U.S. Bank Stadium became the first Super Bowl host stadium to also host a Divisional Playoff game in the same season. Other teams managed to make it to the Super Bowl on home turf but did not manage to go on to win the title. Two of the teams were the Los Angeles Rams, who lost Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl and the 49ers.
Selection process
The location of the Super Bowl is chosen at a meeting of all NFL team owners, usually around three to five years before the event. Through Super Bowl LVI, teams were allowed to bid for the rights to host the Big Game, where cities submitted proposals and were evaluated in terms of stadium renovation and their ability to host. This system was later scrapped in 2018. From 2018 onwards, the league made all decisions regarding hosting sites from Super Bowl LVII onwards: the league chose the venue unilaterally, the chosen team put together a hosting proposal which is then voted upon by the league to determine if it’s acceptable or not.
Some of the requirements that the selected site has to have are the following:
- Must be in a market that hosts an NFL team and must have a minimum of 70,000 seats, with media and electrical amenities necessary to produce the Super Bowl.
- Stadiums where the average game day temperature is below 50°F (10°C) must either have a roof or a waiver given by the league.
- There must be a minimum of 35,000 parking spaces within one mile of the stadium.
- The host stadium must have space for the Gameday Experience, a large pregame entertainment area, within walking distance of the stadium
Most of the costs associated with the Super Bowl must be covered by the host community, although some costs fall within the requirement of the NFL. For example, New Orleans, the site of Super Bowl XLVII in 2013, invested more than $1 billion in infrastructure improvement in the years prior to the game. It has to be noted that apart from the stadium selected, another backup stadium is picked should there need to be a last-minute relocation of the game.
Super Bowl 2023
When is the Super Bowl?
The game is scheduled to be played on February 12, 2023 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. It will be the fourth Super Bowl hosted by the Phoenix metropolitan area, with the most recent being Super Bowl XLIX in 2015.
On September 23, 2022, it was the NFL’s decision to go for Apple Music as the new naming rights sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show, replacing Pepsi, which had been the sponsor for the previous ten years. The selected singer was Rihanna, which will be her first Super Bowl performance and her first live concert in over five years.
Super Bowl tickets for the big game nowadays might cost anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000.
Facts about the Super Bowl
- Roman numerals are used to name each Super Bowl event as football seasons run into two separate calendar years, so instead of outlining each game by the year, they are counted by Roman numerals instead. The sole exception to this naming convention occurred with Super Bowl 50, which was played on February 7, 2016, following the 2015 regular season, and the following year, the traditional numerals returned.
- The Super bowl had never gone into overtime until the 2017 game – Super Bowl LI.
- The team with the most Super Bowl wins are the Pittsburgh Steelers, with six in total, the most of any team in the NFL.
- The winning team is given the Vince Lombardi trophy, named after the coach of the Green Bay Packers who won the first two Super Bowls.
- There is a decade-old tradition of the United States President predicting who will win the NFL Super Bowl game.
- Due to restrictions on advertising, the NFL actually regulates the use of the word ”Super Bowl” in advertisements. This forces companies to use alternative names like the ”Big Game’
Super Bowl and America
The Super Bowl, and the American people have enjoyed a flourishing relationship for years, and it has only gotten stronger as the years rolled by. We hope that you have learned a thing or two about this memorable day in the calendar of every American, should they side with the Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants, Oakland Raiders or Philadelphia Eagles. We are all looking forward to next year to watch these great NFL teams in action and in February, we’ll watch the much-awaited Super Bowl whilst throwing a huge party, of course.