While middle-aged at 53, have you ever wondered how the Super Bowl continues to attract people who know nothing about football? People who refer to the halftime entertainment as the midterm show, believe a down is a tackle, a safety is running off the field, and a blitz is a dance in the end zone? People who consider Super Bowl Sunday a holiday even though, it is, just Sunday. People who preen over dips, chili and wings, dress their pets in silly outfits, while admiring Greg Brady’s wife Gisele. And where is everyone? Officially, the game doesn’t kick until 6:30pm, but nobody is out and about. Did I miss the memo? Here are some lessons from the NFL on how to gather the nation at your big event.
How many people watch the Super Bowl?
The event generally draws approximately 100 million viewers. 114M in good years and 98M in off years, like Sunday. While these stats are dwarfed by global sporting events like the Cricket World Cup Finals (’15 1B viewers) and the ’18 FIFA World Cup Russia 3.4B viewers (over half the world’s population) watched France defeat Croatia; these people are real fans.
Average viewership for NFL games in 2018 was just 15 million. That leaves 85 million casual viewers, roughly the populations of California, Texas and Florida, sampling the wings and occasionally glancing at a new 65” 4K Ultra Smart TV.
Are they ads or mini-series?
The elixir? Accessible, sticky content – coupled with curated social currency and practically no competition.
When advertisers ginned up their games to create Oscar-worthy shorts to justify the eye-popping spend for a :30 spot ($5.25M this year) bathroom breaks went the way of the Woolly Mammoth. Anheuser-Busch and Director Jake Scott capitalized brilliantly with their trilogy featuring the Clydesdales, a Labrador retriever puppy and the touching performance of actor Don Jeanes playing the Clydesdale’s trainer.
2013 Brotherhood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJqzdOr4Ok
2014 Puppy Love https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlNO2trC-mk
2015 Lost Puppy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPKgC8KPBMg&t=1s
Their spots didn’t target the core football fan, but a wider, more diverse audience – namely women, and became to some, more memorable than the game itself.
How did the half-time tradition begin?
In this, “there is something for everyone” panoply, the half-time show began with college marching bands in the 60’s, followed by themed entertainment dominated by Up With People in the 70’s and 80’s, to full pop/rock shows in the 90’s. Interestingly, networks not broadcasting the game created concerts to counter program against the Super Bowl, to capture non-football fans. As the NFL brought in higher value, more relevant talent and created a halftime musical extravaganza, non-fans followed. Eventually, the other nets pretty much ceded the night. Whether half-time was a mind-blower or a bust, the “must-see TV” factor brought a third of the entire United States into the conversation.
How do you attract drive-by fans?
While the “Big Event Phenomenon” is not unique to the Super Bowl, no other US sports event comes close to attracting this jaw-dropping number of casual viewers: not the BCS Championship, the Final of the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, the World Series, Daytona 500, Sunday at the Masters, the Kentucky Derby, the NBA Finals or the Olympics. These events stay in their lanes, not curating and manipulating every minute, to orchestrate a shared experience.
While 2019 was the lowest-rated Super Bowl in 10 years, 85 million casual viewers touched the altar.