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Lessons PR People, Sports Marketers, And Everyone Should Have Learned From Last Year’s Super Bowl Ahead of the February 11 Big Game

Arthur Solomon

As usual, sports marketers, ad agency and PR arms of sports marketers had nothing but good things to say about the efficacy of their client’s TV commercials costing up to $7-million, not including production costs, for a :30 second spot during last year’s Super Bowl. Also, as usual not all marketing experts agreed that the bucks coughed up for the commercials were money well spent.  (More on this later.)

But there were three things that everyone associated with the Super Bowl could, or should, agree on:

  • There was a game played last February 12 and the score was Kansas City 38 Philadelphia 35, and,

  • Kansas City wasn’t the only winner. So was Fox, which televised the game and charged up to $7-million for a :30 second spot, and, 

  • The bloom of covering the teams in the Super Bowl in major media outlets has wilted as reports on gambling and the serious injuries to football players has replaced the fawning pre-game coverage of the past.

If you’re a betting type, a sure winner is that between the conclusion of the regular season and the beginning of Super Bowl coverage of articles about the lack of diversity in the N.F.L. will appear. Examples: In its Jan. 10, 2024 edition, the New York Times published a huge article under the headline, “Diversity Rule Reverberates Beyond N.F.L.” It reported on the struggle of Black and other minorities to gain executive-type positions in the league. And on Jan. 11 it led its sports section with a huge article headlined “After a 5-Year Roller Coaster, Brian Flores is Evolving.”

However, even though some marketing experts feel that the investment in a Super Bowl ad does not justify the cost, CBS reported in early November that ad inventory was virtually sold out for this year’s game on Feb, 11. Commercial air-time costs are about $7 million for a 30-second ad, similar to the 2023 game.  And that does not include commercial production costs which can ads millions of dollars more to the cost.

But I’d be willing to bet the farm on one happening that will occur before the first ball is snapped on Feb. 11, the date of the 2024 Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. the dangers of playing football, which was again a staple of football coverage throughout the season, will reach a crescendo in the weeks leading up to the Big Game. (More on this later.)

Other sure bets are that writer’s block will not be a problem for journalists because, in addition to the life-changing injuries to football players, other topics that are certain to be covered this and in future years are the cost and the efficacy of commercials and articles about betting from home on the game, with the quality of the competing teams bringing up the rear. (Case in point: In its Feb. 4-5, 2023 edition the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had four Super Bowl-related articles – one about the use of twitter advertising, (a sort of ambush marketing), another detailing the use of Stikum by players, a column about trash talk and one about Super Bowl parties. Stories about the game itself were nonexistent. And the New York Times (NYT) Feb. 5 Sunday edition also was devoid of Super Bowl stories.

Even more telling was that both the WSJ and NYT didn’t publish Super Bowl articles on Feb 6, less than one week before last year’s game’s kick-off, certainly a disappointment for sports marketers and their PR people.  Both publications finally did on Feb. 7, but the WSJ article wasn’t about the game. It was a feature about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts’ weightlifting prowess.  As with the WSJ story, the NYT article also wasn’t about the game. It was about prop betting.

In recent years, press coverage leading up to the Super Bowl in major print pubs were about issues surrounding the Big Game, often concentrating on the negative affects of football, not about the teams or game itself.

Some 2023 Story Examples

In its Feb 8, business section, the WSJ reported a story headlined “Super Bowl Bets Seen Doubling to $16 Billion.” A feature about the Kelce brothers playing on the opposing teams was reported in the sports section. The lead story in that day’s NYT covered two full pages, but it was not about the game. It was about the “N.F.L.’s Precarious Diversity” problems. In their Feb. 9 editions the WSJ Super Bowl story was headlined, “A Rocky Season Reaches The Super Bowl,” detailing how scandal and an increase in concussions rocked the league. The NYT ran a feature about the Kelce brothers playing on opposing teams. But a six page take-out about basketball stars LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was dominant.

Finally two days prior to the Super Bowl, the NYT loaded it sports section with three pages of Big Game stories, including players suing the N.F.L. But the WSJ led its two-story sports section with a basketball article.
Those non-betting stories received short shrift compared to the below sampling from a quick internet search I did last year on Feb. 4 and 6:

The search unveiled a barrage of articles about placing bets with legalized bookies that appeared in major news sources. 

Because the outcome of the game is of minor importance to a large segment of the football community, especially to brands that have paid millions of dollars for a commercial that might become the victim of a bathroom break, it’s fair to report on the aspect of a Super Bowl that receives the most major media coverage, not only in the few weeks leading up to the Big Game but throughout the year: Health related injuries to players.

A sampling of articles about the harmful affects, including deaths and other life-changing conditions from playing football that appeared in 2023:

  • Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology: On March 2: Former professional football players who reported experiencing concussion symptoms during their playing careers were found to perform worse on a battery of cognitive tests than nonplayers, according to a study led by Harvard Medical School investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, McLean Hospital, and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.   More than 350 former N.F.L. players were studied as part of the Football Players Health Study at Harvard University an average of 29 years after their playing careers ended. 

  • New York Times on June 20: A huge article taking up the entire front page of the sports section and continuing for the major portion of another page said, in part, “A new study published on Tuesday in the scientific journal Nature Communications added a critical wrinkle: A football player’s chances of developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., are related to the number of head impacts absorbed, but also to the cumulative impact of all those hits” The article quoted “Eric Nauman,  a biomedical engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati who was not involved in the study, saying the results strengthened the idea that an accumulation of subconcussive hits, rather than concussions, was the driving force behind long-term cognitive decline.

  • New York Times on August 29: A story about a college football coach whose son’s dead brain showed that he had C.T. E.

  • CNN on September 10: And hour-long Anderson Cooper special was titled “Hard Hits: Can Football Be Made Safe.” The program detailed the violent aspects of the game and told about the efforts to make it safer. Despite the efforts, prominent former players said that they would be against having their children become football players.

  • New York Times on Nov. 20: A huge full page article beginning on page one of the sports section and continuing for another full two pages was titled, “EVEN THE YOUNG GET C.T.E.” It was based on a study of 151 young athletes’ brains released by Boston University.

  • New York Times on Dec. 10: Another full page article about 10 former players suing the league over its disability plan, which the players claim wrongfully denies them benefits.

To hear Super Bowl advertising proponents defend their ad buys, a person might think it’s the world’s most watched and eagerly anticipated sporting event. But that’s not the case. Super Bowl viewership has been dwarfed by the 2022 World Cup and Beijing Olympics. And this year’s half-time show featuring Usher is certain to attract viewers who will only tune in to see him perform, echoing half-time shows of previous years.

Nevertheless, Super Bowl ad costs increase every year and 2023 was no excerption. The recurring question among marketers is whether a Super Bowl commercial is worth the cost. The answer is “yes” or “no,” depending on whom a marketer believes (or wants to believe).

As an individual who has played key roles in several national and international mega-sports marketing accounts I can provide you with a sure bet: That brand executives and their ad agencies will say how pleased they are with results engendered by their Big Bucks commercials on mega events, even though they’re not. Some have said so to me personally.

(The day after last year’s  Super Bowl,, Dealbook, the NYT’s influential business newsletter, reported on Feb. 11 that, “ Fox has raked in about $600 million in advertising revenue from the Super Bowl, a record as brands aim to reach what is likely to be the biggest TV audience of the year: an expected 100 million viewers (not a Super Bowl record)…”  On the day after the game, Nielsen reported an average TV audience of 113 million people, making it the third most-watched Super Bowl on record and the third most-watched television broadcast of all time, which was greater than last year’s audience of 112.3 million viewers on average. Dealbook also reported that, “Americans are expected to bet $16 billion on the game, according to the American Gaming Association. That number is in legal and illegal bets and is more than twice the value of last year’s estimated wagers…”)  

While Fox charged as much as $7-million for a: 30 spot on its telecast, the cost to brands is much higher. One estimate is that when you add in top-tier talent, rights fees, teaser ads, production costs, public relations, social media campaigns and advertising is that the aggregate amount of money necessary to cover all facets of a Super Bowl commercial can be as much as $50-million dollars.

But some marketing experts still feel it’s worth the price:

“Most people tend to run in the opposite direction of advertising, but [the] Super Bowl remains the one day where they don’t,” opined Joe Glennon, an associate professor in the Department of Advertising at Temple University’s Lew Klein College of Media and Communication, about the Super Bowl last year. There’s still no better way to reach 70, 80 or 90 million people all at once than the Super Bowl.”

“There is also incredible brand-building power in having lots of people see you at the same time.”  (My question: But how do you know that they’re all watching at the same time?)

A survey by the behavioral research company Veylinx, which analyzed the behavior of 1,610 U.S. consumers pre- and post-Super Bowl LVII, found an increase in product demand among viewers by 6.4%, but poll’s findings also had some doubts about the efficacy of advertising on the game.

“The overall increase in consumer demand was driven by women, who accounted for a 21% increase in demand growth. The commercials had minimal impact on men, yielding just 1% demand growth for the brands tested. Gen Z viewers were largely unimpressed by the Super Bowl ads, with demand among 18 to 25 year olds actually shrinking by 1%,” according to the sample.

"It's not really a surprise to see that Super Bowl ads improve sales, but the short term bump alone may not be enough to justify the $7 million price tag," said Veylinx founder and CEO Anouar El Haji in a press release.

Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, was also dubious about the effectiveness of Super Bowl advertising. He said last year, in part, in a Feb.7 interview with TribLive, a regional publication serving Western Pennsylvania, “that additional viewing probably helps today’s Super Bowl commercials better serve their intended purpose – to sell products and services – but he also feels like some of the cultural cachet Super Bowl ads once had has been lost.

“He theorizes that TV networks convinced American viewers that the Super Bowl was not just a game, but an amazing half-time show with a big-name music star (not the Up with People singers of the 1976 Super Bowl or the marching bands that preceded them) and a film festival of the world’s most extravagant commercials.

“But viewers may have caught onto that sleight-of-hand marketing,” Mr. Thompson said.

"How many times have you heard people say, 'I used to go to the bathroom during the commercials, but now I go to the bathroom during the game?' That became a cliché," Thompson said. "But I think the smoke has cleared, and we begin to see more clearly that, yeah, they're better than the rest of the commercials, but they aren't all that memorable. And there have been several years now of not-terribly-exciting lineups of Super Bowl commercials. If you have three or four years where the commercials are disappointing, you start thinking, okay, I can go to the bathroom during the ads, especially if I've already seen them three times."

Another less-than-positive view of Super Bowl advertising was a survey released on Feb. 2 by Mitto, a leading provider of global omnichannel communications solutions. The survey found a significant discrepancy in the power of a Super Bowl ad to drive purchases compared to ongoing personalized communications. While large campaigns think a Super Bowl ad may increase overall brand awareness, almost half of consumers (41%) reported they were more likely to purchase from a brand that communicates with them in an ongoing and personalized way. The findings suggest the millions of dollars brands spend on a single Super Bowl ad may not be the most effective approach to driving purchasing behavior, said a news release in part.

The survey of 1,000 Americans aged 18+ found that while more than half of consumers (52%) believed a Super Bowl ad would be a successful use of a brand's marketing budget, these ads are still not driving a level of purchasing behavior to warrant the $7 million price tag of a 30-second spot at this weekend's event. Fewer than a quarter of respondents (23%) said they were likely to make a purchase based on a Super Bowl ad alone.

Bob Kent, an associate professor of marketing at the Lerner College of the University of Delaware, also isn't certain that the Super Bowl commercials are effective. "Just spending money doesn't mean you get results," he said.

"It could be worth the investment if a company manages to convey a very effective and creative message. Super Bowl ads can take on a life of their own online, leading to even more views. The problem, he said, is that companies are competing for attention, often with other similar products – like cellphones and soda. It's very risky, he said. 'How are you going to have a standout ad?'

As a former journalist, I have long believed that the hoopla over Super Bowl commercials is undeserved because the great majority are pedestrian, silly, or overdramatic. Some are just plain stupid. Big-name actors appearing in some didn't help the commercials but, in my opinion, diminished the actors.

Most of the comments and articles about the Super Bowl are not new to followers of Big Game coverage – the brutality of the game, cost of the commercials, betting, and racism within the N.F.L. and the politicization of the game.

However, there were two new elements that received coverage: 1) There was a new in-person betting experience for people inside the Super Bowl "campus," proving, if there was any doubt, that the NFL is now in matrimony with the legal bookies," and 2) Anheuser-Busch relinquished exclusive rights for national ads during the game, thus providing the opportunity for other brewers to advertise, giving stay-at-home betters the opportunity to drown their sorrows in a variety of brews and hard liquor commercials when their bets don't pan out.

One facet of the Super Bowl that has received scant coverage over the years concerned the NFL's permitting alcoholic beverages to be hawked as an official partner of the league. But that's a secret no longer.

An NFL press release dated June 16, 2021, said, in part, "The National Football League (NFL) today welcomed Diageo, a global leader in beverage alcohol, as its first-ever Official Spirits Sponsor. The multiyear sponsorship is uniquely structured with the NFL fan in mind and will include opportunities for on-site activation and engagement with adult fans, as well as broadcast, digital, and social content from NFL Kickoff through the Super Bowl.

For years, Crown Royal Canadian Whisky has had a significant footprint with the NFL, and this sponsorship takes it to the next level for Diageo."

Interesting is that while the NFL enthusiastically allows beer and hard liquor commercials to be part of its family, it doesn't permit those products in team locker rooms. Also, while having relationships with legalized bookies and permitting commercials on its game telecasts encouraging viewers to bet from home, the league has a rule forbidding players from betting. The NFL philosophy appears to be, it's okay for viewers of our telecasts, which include many youngsters, to drink and bet, but it's off-limits for our players. If that isn't hypocrisy, what is? Oh, I know, The NFL's many promises that it will never let a team relocate to Las Vegas.

But there was also one aspect of the Super Bowl that has been proven over the years: No matter how prestigious an event and how much money is spent to promote it, there's no way to limit negative coverage.

Since the Super Bowl is actually a made-for-TV event featuring a series of commercials interrupted by several minutes of football, no analysis of the 2023 telecast should exclude the commentary leading up to the Big Game. As usual, the pedestrian chatter can only be appreciated by TV masochists and sadists, football fanatics, network bean counters, and legal bookies who bet that their misleading "no loss" commercials will entice viewers to gamble.

I attempted, unsuccessfully last year to watch a fair portion of Fox's marathon pre-game television coverage but couldn't take the done-to-death commentary, which includes such incisive questions like, "What does it mean to be in a Super Bowl?" and "Did you sleep last night?" and the rehashed-to-death subjects that Philadelphia Eagles Jalen Hurts and Kansas City's Bengals Patrick Mahomes became the first two Black quarterbacks to appear in a Super Bowl, and that the Kelce brothers also made history by being the first siblings to oppose each other in the Big Game. And, of course, what would a Super Bowl be without the NFL attempting to convince people that football and the American flag are a daily double.

On Feb. 11, 2023, Jim Acosta on his CNN program interviewed Bob Costas. Instead of providing the usual cliché-driven talk, Costas provided an in-depth analysis of what's right and wrong with the Super Bowl, including what the NFL could learn from baseball.

Other excellent TV commentary on last year's game was provided by Fox's game commentators, play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt and analyst Greg Olsen, who provided insightful analysis from the kickoff to the game's conclusion. Burkhardt, as usual, called a superb game, often handing the mic to Olsen, who put his knowledge and reputation on the line by telling viewers what to expect during Kansas City's winning drive before the plays happened. His analysis was as good as any I've ever heard and much better than most. ESPN's after the game program, hosted by Chris Berman and featuring interviews with game participants, also was definitely worth tuning into and, in comparison, made Fox's post-game show look inept.

It can't be good news for sports marketers and the rest of the football family that coverage of the Super Bowl has dramatically changed from the days when it was all about the teams and the always overrated – in my opinion – commercials.

Major news sources no longer act as PR arms of sports leagues. Over the past few years, stories leading up to the coin toss of the game have been dominated by articles about internet betting and the physical damage to the players. And there is no reason to believe those scenarios will change. In fact, as more coverage is given to the brutality of the game, and to the detrimental effects of betting on sports events, the negative press coverage is likely to increase.

Many people, especially those who view football and other sports as product-selling vehicles, don't care about which team wins. But there was an exciting game last year which made up for the overhyped and often silly commercials without clear message points that might create interest in a product.