super bowl ads

Ads, Food, and Gambling Galore – Essentials of the Super Bowl

Nick Lehr

Gambling and the Super Bowl have always gone hand in hand. To University of Iowa sports media scholar Tom Oates, what makes the developments of the past few years so remarkable is the NFL’s stunning reversal on its own attitudes toward betting. Gone are the quaint days of league officials lobbying Congress to put restrictions and guardrails in place.

How the Super Bowl Evolved From Football Game to Entertainment Extravaganza

Peter M. Hopsicker and Mark Dyerson

The NFL’s strategic marriage to television has also diverted attention away from the game on the field. In 1967, advertising rates for a 30-second commercial spot cost a modest $42,500. In the years since, they’ve escalated to become the most expensive advertising time in the history of television. After 1985, in response to the huge impact of Apple’s legendary “1984” commercial, advertising rates soared to over $500,000 for a 30-second spot. This trend sparked the emergence of the “Ad Bowl,” an unofficial but hyper-intense marketing competition to produce the most creative and memorable television commercial targeting the Super Bowl’s enormous captive audience.

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