Many of you will be at a Super Bowl party this Sunday as the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers square off in the 47^th (or XLVII if you are a die hard Roman numeral person) classic football championship. The Super Bowl has become the consummate sports marketing venue. It is estimated that 140 million people watch at least part of the game. This historically has been the largest television audience of the year and advertisers know it. The TV networks charge their highest advertising rates for the Super Bowl. This year they are charging a whopping $3.8 million for a 30 second TV ad. It all speaks to the ultimate brand that the Super Bowl has become. And it shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. Most TV markets are fickle. Even the most successful shows have their moment in the sun and then begin to lose viewers. As they do, their advertising revenue streams begin to dry up. But the Super Bowl has maintained its ability to draw a large crowd and top dollars year after year.

The very first Super Bowl was played on January 15, 1967 at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The idea was to have the champions of the two professional football leagues - the older and more established National Football League and the upstart American Football League - play each other in a game that would decide the world champion. Lamar Hunt, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, the AFL representative of that first game, is credited with coining the term "Super Bowl” since it was played just a couple of weeks after the college bowl games. The first Super Bowl between the Chiefs and the Green Bay Packers was not a sellout, but the TV audience was huge. 51 million people watched the game on two networks (CBS and NBC both carried the game.) A 30 second ad cost $37,500. The two football leagues realized they were onto something big. They had just created a marketing venue with a huge upside and there were advertising dollars to be made. In fact, the Super Bowl hastened what had been bantered about for some time: that the two leagues should merge, which it did in 1970. The Super Bowl became the ultimate brand. In fact, according to Nielsen Media Research, of the 44 highest viewed TV shows of all time, almost half of them (21) are Super Bowls.

How has the NFL managed to grow the Super Bowl into the colossal marketing machine that can command more each year, regardless of economic upturns or downturns? First, they have a product that leads the peers in their industry. I am not only talking about other broadcast sports per se, but other TV shows in the entertainment industry. The NFL has marketed their product very well. They can draw a huge crowd week after week. You do not want to be a show competing head-to-head with the NFL. Secondly, it is the kind of entertainment that has you on the edge of your seat. It is entertaining because it is unpredictable. I grow tired of the same old story lines in TV sitcoms. This is competition at its finest. On any given Sunday, the favorite could be upset. It appeals to an inner sense of rivalry. You can choose your own heroes and villains; define your own Davids and Goliaths. Thirdly, the NFL has learned how to get people – particularly men - to talk about their product. Long before there were social networking sites or fantasy football leagues, the NFL had figured out that the more people talked about their product, the larger their audience would become. They allowed the networks to set up special games to boost their national audience. Monday Night Football was a marquis game for decades. Only the best played on Monday nights. It has now grown to Sunday and Thursday nights. The NFL learned how to have both a regional and national appeal. In this way, I might know all about the players on my local team and the best teams in the NFL. The talk around the water cooler the next day centered on the NFL game of the week. They engaged their audience. Fourthly, they formed a very tight relationship with network TV. The NFL had what the networks needed: a very large audience. The networks had what the NFL needed: advertising clients willing to pay whatever they must to get their products in front of the masses. The Super Bowl is just the natural outgrowth of a larger mega-marketing strategy that is very simple in its philosophy. If you can capture the attention of people for three hours where they will block out any other distraction, you have a powerful marketing tool.

As you are watching the Super Bowl this Sunday, note how riveted you are to this game. Even if you are at a party full of people where the level of noise and distractions are at a high level, you will be able to remember the cleverest commercials you see. You will not be able to look away from the TV. It has that kind of hold on us.

But the Super Bowl is more than just the game that crowns the NFL champions. The Super Bowl brand has grown past the actual game - and that is purposeful. Here is where the Super Bowl surpasses the rest of the NFL season. For instance, this year’s AFC Championship game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots was the most watched show during the week of January 14 and had over 47 million viewers.* The Super Bowl will double that number. Its appeal crosses over the men demographic to include women as well. As the years have gone by, the Super Bowl brand has grown exponentially. No one was talking about the halftime entertainment at the first Super Bowl in 1967. No one was interested in who was singing the National Anthem. Somewhere along the way, the NFL began to understand that if they were going to be able to keep their viewership climbing each year, they had to create an event that appealed to women too. If the game was a dud, they would lose the female audience by halftime. They had to keep the audience’s eyes on the TV in order to keep the advertising dollars flowing. That is the reason you will see more diverse advertisers during the Super Bowl than during the regular season. It won’t just be beer and cars. You will also see the trailers for upcoming movies, Tide detergent, Oreo cookies, Skechers shoes, Mio liquid water enhancer, and realtor Century 21. All of those are geared towards a female audience who are the primary purchasers of these goods and services. All of this may sound a bit sexist to you, but it is really just understanding target markets and what appeals to each demographic.

By the time the game is over and the Lombardi trophy is hoisted by the victors, over $250 million in ad revenue will change hands on Sunday night. All of this built around marketing a brand that has been crafted to capture our attention and deliver us to high dollar advertisers. The real game on Sunday won’t be football. The real game is marketing, and it is never played better than at the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl TV Ratings, by Bill Gorman, TV By the Numbers, January 18, 2009

List of most watched television broadcasts, Wikepedia.com

Remember When a Super Bowl Ad Cost $37,500?, by Lance Madden, Forbes.com, January 29, 2013

Jan 15, 1967: Packers face Chiefs in first Super Bowl, This Day in History, www.History.com

* Prime Broadcast Network TV - United States, Week of January 14, 2013, www.nielsen.com