The biggest annual sporting event will commence on Sunday, Feb. 8, and will be brought to the living room of millions for the many trends and festivities it brings.
This year in the NFL’s 106th season, the back-to-back, title-defending Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 59. Despite who plays in this game, it seems that sports fans from around the world will tune into the event regardless.
Viewers of every Super Bowl will be extremely high due to the other festivities that are based around the game. According to Forbes, last year’s event was the most watched program in U.S. history.
A trend that is followed every year by Super Bowl watchers is the amount of food purchased for the event. Whether viewers are in their living room with 40 people, or just with a couple of friends, people buy massive amounts of food for the game.
KSC sophomore Owen Warner said he has a plan to celebrate the big game saying, “I’m excited to get together with my friends and family and have some good Super Bowl food.”
Food Dive reports that during the week of Super Bowl 58 in 2024, snack food sales soared to 670 million dollars. The site also reports that 34 million pounds of tortilla chips were sold, along with 9 million pounds of pretzels.
Viewers of the big game are also known to buy/make wings and dips and buy an ample amount of pizza. The New York Times shows that in 2023, Domino’s sold two million pizzas for the Super Bowl.
Apart from what the fans do to celebrate the event, the Super Bowl contains a halftime performance that does not occur in any other games throughout the season. Each Super Bowl has had a performance by a world-renowned artist; some of those have been Prince, Michael Jackson, Beyonce and this year’s artist Kendrick Lamar.
When asked, KSC sophomore Sam Johnson said he was excited for all aspects of the game.
“I love to watch the halftime show and everything like that. It could go either way but I am excited for it,” Johnson said.
These performances are able to draw in an audience apart from the general sports world. The artists performing have about 15 minutes to perform their top hits in front of the entire world. People who may not necessarily be fans of football or even sports in general have a reason to at least watch until halftime.
The musical performance is also a way for artists to spread a message while on the biggest stage. In the 2002 Super Bowl, U2 used their opportunity to acknowledge and remember the victims of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. During Michael Jackson’s performance in 1993, Jackson used his uniting song “We Are The World” to spread his message of love and kindness.
The final aspect that makes the Super Bowl so popular is the commercials played throughout the televised event. Forbes reports that in 2024, advertisers spent about $7,000,000 for every thirty seconds of airtime during the Super Bowl. The first Super Bowl in 1967 had advertisers paying $150,000 for just a minute of commercial airtime. These commercials are usually more creative and exciting than those of a regular game or television program and keep viewers of the event glued to the television. The conversation of our favorite commercial is almost as important as the results and happenings of the actual football game.
All of these factors represent just how big the Super Bowl is on a financial and viewership level. The food trends, halftime performances, and commercials all help in making the Super Bowl such a widely watched event. This year’s game is a rematch of Super Bowl 57, a storyline sure to draw in fans on top of the hundreds of millions that usually watch the game. The Super Bowl will take place on Sunday, Feb. 9, and can be watched on a variety of streaming platforms.
Jacob Enscoe can be contacted at
jenscoe@kscequinox.com
