Super Bowl hype will only grow, and the actual game will only shrink

This year’s Super Bowl, with its tsunami of Vegas glitz, hordes of celebrities, eye-searing graphics, overstuffed halftime show, attention-deficit-inducing whiparounds, over-the-top and nonstop analysis, wall-to-wall advertising, and occasional football, drew more American viewers on a single network than any program in the entire history of humanity.

You know what that means, right? Yeah. This is the most restrained and tame the Super Bowl will ever be again.

The Super Bowl long ago ceased being “just” a football game. It’s a spectacle, the last shared popular-culture event America will ever enjoy together. You have to enjoy sports live and in the moment, and the Super Bowl is the culmination and pinnacle of sports in this country. With that many eyeballs in one place, the sponsors, celebrities, hustlers, influencers and grifters come down from the hills, everyone wanting a piece of your sweet, precious attention. That’s why Super Bowl ads cost a reported $7 million for a 30-second spot this year, why they sell out every year, and why that cost is never, ever coming down.

Super Bowl week is now a nonstop barrage of hype and blather, a sonic boom of promotion, speculation and look-at-me attempted virality that has reduced the players themselves to exhibits in a zoo. Multiply that by the natural ambient glitz of a host city like Las Vegas, and you’ve got a weeklong festival that’s now Mardi Gras crossbred with a thousand bachelor/bachelorette parties. The football isn’t the centerpiece, it’s one of a hundred possible stops on the week’s itinerary.

But even if you weren’t in Vegas, you could spend untold hours watching pregame content. Hell, on Super Bowl Sunday itself, pregame shows started up at 9 a.m. ET for a 6:30 p.m. kickoff. That’s not healthy! No sane human should be watching football coverage for more than nine hours before kickoff!

Because here’s the thing about hype: It’s addictive, and what did the job this year won’t break…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/super-bowl-hype-will-only-grow-and-the-actual-game-will-only-shrink-173729187.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-02-13 17:37:29

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