Every winter, about 100 million Americans put their lives on hold to watch the championship of the National Football League (NFL), also known as the Super Bowl. It’s a full-on celebration of the country’s obesity epidemic, watery American lagers, and overpriced television commercials. The winner is crowned world champion, even though most of the world hasn’t heard of American football. In other words, it’s a spectacle that can’t be missed. To take the entertainment to the next level, here are seven relatively useless Super Bowl facts.
1
The first Super Bowl was played on January 15, 1967 in Los Angeles, though it was called the AFL-NFL World Championship game. The NFL as we know it today formed from the merger of the American Football League (AFL) and the prior National Football League. At the time of the first Super Bowl, the two leagues had announced the merger but still functioned independently until the end-of-the-season championship game.
2
Of the NFL’s 32 current franchises, 12 have never won a Super Bowl. Two teams—the Minnesota Vikings and the Buffalo Bills—have made the game four times each, only to lose all four times.
3
Of the 10 most watched television events in US history (measured by total viewers), eight are Super Bowls. The Apollo 11 Moon landing and Richard Nixon’s resignation speech are the outliers. (The final episode of M*A*S*H remains the highest rated American broadcast of all time—a whopping 60.2 percent of all households with a television tuned in.)
4
A 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl costs about $7 million.
5
Super Bowl halftime performers are paid union scale (i.e. peanuts) for their performance, though travel expenses and the non-negligible production costs are covered by the NFL. “Payment” comes largely in the form of exposure, with performers typically seeing a massive post-performance spike in sales and streams.
6
The approximately 100 million Super Bowl viewers in the US are joined by another 50 million or so viewers outside the US, mostly in other North American countries. As a point of comparison, the 2022 World Cup final (in men’s soccer) saw perhaps 1.5 billion people watch at least part of the match. (Disclaimer: The World Cup final is only played once every four years.)
7
A more just comparison of the Super Bowl to soccer might involve a look at the annual Champions League final. This crowning of the best European club soccer team attracts a global viewership in the 450 million range, about three times that of the Super Bowl.
With this smattering of Super Bowl facts in hand, you can more thoroughly enjoy the big game. Or you can scrap the numbers and stick to the watery lagers.
(This article was updated on February 2, 2024.)
6 Responses
On the lighter side,
an American diplomat took a visiting Russian diplomat to a football game to show Americana. After game went to dinner and asked Russian “how is the game, Russian replied ‘ game is o.k. But why there are so many meetings in between?.
Hahahaha
I remember in the 80s and 90s when the Super Bowl was anything but Super. They were blowouts. During the “Brady” era, the Super Bowl games have mostly been very close and down to the wire, other than the game last week of course.
It did seem like the games in the 80s and 90s were often blowouts! Thankfully, we’ve had some good ones lately, not including the most recent edition as you point out.
They might be useless but it’s still fun to brush up on these facts before the big game on Sunday.
Absolutely! The trivia is part of the fun.