Bill Matthies

Super Bowl Magic Pixie Dust
February 20, 2007

Early Monday morning the day after the game, Leslie, a jogging friend of mine, asked what I thought of the Super Bowl. At that point (less than 12 hours after it had ended) I didn’t even know who had won. She had gone to a SB party while I had spent Sunday afternoon enjoying a top-down drive along the coast, later that evening doing a variety of things that did not include watching TV or listening to the radio.

In a way I felt culturally disassociated. Based on media coverage it seems as though “everyone” watches the Super Bowl; however, there is nothing that “everyone” does, except be born and die, and watching the Super Bowl is no exception. Still, a lot of people do. According to Nielsen, 97 million TVs were tuned to the game; 64 percent of all that could be (79 percent of those in Indianapolis). In contrast, 23 percent of the TVs in use in 1967 were tuned to the first Super Bowl.

The U.S. Census tells us that the following is true since the first Super Bowl:

·The U.S. population has increased 50 percent.

·The world’s population has increased 89 percent.

·Florida, the host state for this year’s Super Bowl, has seen its population increase 200 percent.

·U.S. citizens 65 or older have increased 95 percent.

·Median wages for males have increased 480 percent (but only 17 percent in comparable 2005 dollars). For women, just over 1,000 percent (106 percent in 2005 dollars).

·In 1967, women earned 38 percent of what men did. In 2007, they make 67 percent of the median salary for men.

A 2007 Super Bowl TV ad cost $80,000 a second (Jeez, maybe I owed it to them to have watched), which is approximately 600 percent more than a typical January ’07 prime time TV ad costs. Or in case you wondered, 64,000 percent more than a 1967 Super Bowl ad. What about the price of a ticket? Well, the face value of a 1967 seat was $6. In 2007? Just under 12,000 percent more ($700) but remember, that’s face value. This year the going price was over $4,000 a seat.

My hat is off to all the NFL marketers who for the last 40 years have done so much to make the Super Bowl what it is today. I can think of no other phenomenon (that’s what it is) that even comes close to the impact of that one game, one day each year. While I don’t watch, I well appreciate the genius of what they have done.

The game itself has changed little in 40 years while everything associated with it is completely different. For example, all the TVs used to watch this year’s game are related to those used in 1967 in name only.

How about the marketing of those TVs?Well I think we could use some of that pixie dust.

Posted by Bill Matthies on February 20, 2007 | Comments (0)