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Businesses the sure winners
February 2, 2002: 1:34 p.m. ET
News
Super Bowl is often the Super Bore,
but it's a can't-lose event for
businesses.
companies
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.
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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.
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MOBILE NEWS
2002
SportsBiz: Football's
success a good bet Jan. 11, 2002
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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MONEY Magazine
Customer Service
SportsBiz: Ready to
pay for some
football? - Jan. 25,
Commercials, such as this one for
Cadillac, have become almost as big a
star of the Super Bowl as the game itself.
SportsBiz: An
Olympic bite on ad
sales - Dec. 18, 2001
SportsBiz column
archive
NFL
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
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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.
"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."
The regular fans of the Rams and
Patroits are virtually locked out of
attending the big game.
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, (President of Impact Sports), 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
RELATED STORIES
SportsBiz: Ready to pay for some
football?
- Jan. 25, 2002
RELATED LINKS
SportsBiz column archive
NFL
SportsBiz: Football's success a
good bet
- Jan. 11, 2002
SportsBiz: An Olympic bite on ad
sales
- Dec. 18, 2001
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