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Businesses the sure winners
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February 2, 2002: 1:34 p.m. ET
Super Bowl is often the Super Bore, but it's a can't-lose event for businesses.
A weekly column by Staff Writer Chris Isidore
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - As a sporting event, it is far more often the Super Bore than the Super Bowl - a blowout match over before half-time, if not the opening kickoff.
But as a business event, nothing in the world of sports approaches this Sunday's big game.
Even if ratings and advertising rates have slipped a bit, there's still nothing like it in terms of the marriage of big business and sports in the country.
Fox had to cut back pre-game coverage due to the weak advertising market and scramble to sell the last few spots on this year's game, but it still expects to book revenue of $225 million on Sunday's broadcasts. That's almost 10 percent of the revenue Fox Entertainment Group (FOX: Research, Estimates) is expected to book for the entire first quarter.
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Commercials, such as this one for Cadillac, have become almost as big a star of the Super Bowl as the game itself. | |
The game has become a near national holiday in honor of selling and consumerism - with the commercials becoming almost as big an attraction as the game itself. The sport itself has become as secondary as religion has for many people at Christmas.
Six years ago I had a Russian journalist stay with my family for a week as part of an exchange program. He was here during the Super Bowl, so we had a party so he could get the full U.S. sports experience. The thing that confused and amazed him more than anything else is the idea that Americans would stop their championship game, the game that everyone seemed to care so much about, simply to show a commercial and try to sell soft drinks or cars or beer.
I'm sure the TV timeouts was all that he talked about when he got home and related stories about American sports. And it was the an important lesson for him to learn about how and why U.S. teams dominate every sport except soccer - a sport that does not lend itself to being halted to show commercials.
Football is a sport that if it didn't exist, big business in this country would have invented. In a very real sense it did.
At the time of Super Bowl I in 1967, the sport was popular, but nowhere near as dominant in terms of viewership and fan support as it is today. But the television networks and their advertisers realized that the once-a-week nature of the game made it a perfect programming fit.
Hockey is difficult to stop for regular commercial breaks. And hockey, baseball and basketball had to go up against the broadcasters' prime-time programming night after night, while football could grow in the protected environment of an unchallenged Sunday afternoon. One night of prime-time football could face no competition from any other football game.
And so the sport grew to levels never seen in any other sport. Even in this age of scores of cable channels in 83 percent of U.S. homes, the majority of U.S. television sets this Sunday will be showing the game, and its commercials.
Business dominates the fans at the game even more. Those who attend this Sunday's big game aren't the average fans who fill the seats and support the teams week after week in the season. Each team in the game gets only 17 percent of the available tickets. The league gets 25.8 percent - with a large percentage of those seats going to "business partners" of the league.
Each of the teams not in the game splits equal shares that add up to a third of the seats. And those tickets, along with many of the tickets given to the NFC and AFC champs - go to the companies with signage deals or luxury boxes or other business relations with the various teams.
So while fans who buy only a percentage of regular season tickets in basketball or baseball often get the right to buy their team's postseason seats, the Super Bowl is locked out to most of the Rams and Patriots' season ticket holders.
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The regular fans of the Rams and Patroits are virtually locked out of attending the big game. | |
"My brother's boss, who is on the St. Louis sports commission, got tickets," said Randy Samuelson, a Rams season ticket holder who will be trying to buy scalped tickets this weekend. "I know another lady, an ad rep, who got tickets. The blue collar season ticket holder is shut out."
But the Super Bowl gives those corporations a chance to wine and dine and schmooze their favored clients like few other events. Golf outings, parties and other events fill every minute of a weekend, that will probably cost businesses about $5,000 to $10,000 per client entertained.
David Wnukowski, CEO of VIP Sports Marketing, a firm that arranges such corporate outings at major sporting events, says the Super Bowl is one of the most appreciated business perks that can be offered to a client. He estimates that about 80 percent of the tickets for the game are paid for by a business and given to either clients or top employees.
"Regardless of what the Super Bowl is in regards to often being a bad game, it's most watched show in history," he said. "It's a see-and-be-seen type of event." 
Click here to send mail to Chris Isidore
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