So a bunch of guys go into a field and decide to toss around a football for awhile .No big deal, it is fun . You get to rough someone up and not get sued. One can exercise and test your judgment skills of catching and getting away with the precious ball without being touched. Simple fun. Not ! It has become big business and the fun is the last part of it.

We can just look at the Superbowl numbers for an example of how big financially the “game” is. We just saw recently the Superbowl XLV that is 46 if you forgot how to read roman numerals that was played for the first time in Indianapolis. It is the 12^th largest city with a population of 820,445. So who cares. Well the football big shots care because they can tap into this large population by offering the city a big show and thereby receiving revenue from products bearing the numbers and names of their players.

All the money received from this event does trickle down a little to the actual players who decide to show up for it. The winning players receive $88,000 each to show up for the game which happens to be a record high and each looser get $44,000 dollars for the afternoon game. Hey! I don’t mind being called a looser if I can get that kind of money for an afternoon’s worth of fun and fame.

Super Bowl XIV, that is fourteen, at the Rose Bowl, a number of years ago, drew nearly 104,000 that is 103,985 to be precise people to the game. The number represents the largest amount of people yet to see a bunch of guys toss a football around according to the Associated Press. The least amount of people to attend a Superbowl was for the very first time, a mere 61,946 who saw the game live at the Los Angelis Coliseum. Back then it was known as the First World Championship Game AFL vs. NFL. Two leagues going at it for the last time that year.

All told, the first 45 Super Bowls, drew 3,512,727 fans and for those of us who couldn’t make it in person like some people did at $3,500 a ticket, the event was broadcast all over the world in over 185 countries, translated into 30 different languages. What is wacky is that most of these countries won’t even play the game.

Here in America, the Super Bowl is traditionally the most watched television show in the country for the year and this year kept that tradition. Practically everyone stops their perfectly reasonable habits and cheers for some team they probably know very little about. For 111 Million viewers it is an excuse to drink lots of beer, eat greasy salty food and ultimately behave badly and blame it all on getting into the game!

So with all those people in one spot at the same place is a marketer’s dream. No way could any company trying to sell their junk get as many people to pay attention at the same time. So, even a 30 second commercial if you can get it is worth any money for the exposure to your product or service.

Advertisers will pay about 3.5 Million dollars for that precious 30 second spot. I guess with all the beer being consumed, 30 seconds is just about all the attention span we have. Food and beverage and car companies will even have contests for the most creative advertisement. This year a guy with his dog and a bag of Doritos’s chips was voted the best commercial. I guess if we could phone in our votes, we would get lots of votes for our political candidates as well.

The game is also a boom for the snack companies. People ripped and ate over 1.25 billion chicken wings this year. There are even food chains that sell primarily chicken wings with all kinds off sauces to make that pile of grease and bones appealing so revealed that number in The Wall Street Journal

They also consumed 71.4 Million pounds of avocado for their dips and chips. And the tickets for the very first Super Bowl sold for between 6 and twelve dollars. So, did you watch the Super Bowl this year? 66% of men said yes and 28% said no.

64% of women said yes and 33% said no.

So leave the guys alone when they want to toss the ball around a little. They might then have the desire to get in on some of the money nade from this “game.”