The Super Bowl is the biggest night in all of sports and draws millions and millions of viewers every year. Super Bowl LVIII between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers in 2024 gathered 123.4 million average viewers across all platforms, which made it the most watched telecast in history, according to NFL Operations.
That is a lot of eyes all looking at the same thing at the same time — making the Super Bowl bigger than just the game itself.
This year’s Super Bowl was between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs at the Ceasar’s Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. The game itself ended up being a blowout with the Eagles defeating the Chiefs, 44-20. The Eagles jumped to an early lead and held the high-flying Kansas City offense to zero points in the first half. This only put more of a spotlight on the other amenities the Super Bowl has to offer.
If you ask somebody why they are going to watch the Super Bowl, there is a 50 percent chance they are going to say for the commercials.
Super Bowl commercials are the biggest platforms for companies to get their names out to the public and raise their sales. This year, it cost an average of $8 million for a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl, according to CBS News.
The first commercial to be aired after the stoppage of play during the game was Dunkin’s lustrous commercial that featured Ben Affleck, Bill Belichick, and Druski. In the commercial, a rival coffee company named “Barista Buds” was featured and represented by a group of white men in preppy green clothing. Dunkin’s star-studded cast then proceeded to poke fun at the Barista Buds group, which symbolized the feud between Starbucks and Dunkin’.
Dunkin’ spent money on a 60-second ad filled with household names to throw shade at their competitor. That is what the Super Bowl is all about.
Hims & Hers is a telehealth company that allows patients to talk with certified doctors over the phone, not physically in their office. The company decided to make a much-needed statement about obesity in the U.S. for its first Super Bowl commercial.
The 60-second commercial, which was played right out of a stoppage of play, was set to Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” and flashed different statistics about obesity on the screen. The narrator then stated that the system was built to keep us “sick and stuck” before beginning to promote the company’s services. Hims & Hers decided to make a splash on the biggest night in advertising, and they delivered.
The other main attraction of the Super Bowl is the halftime show, which was headlined by rap phenomenon Kendrick Lamar. Lamar is the hottest name in the music industry right now after winning five Grammys just a week before the big game.
Lamar decided to make a statement with his halftime show by incorporating Samuel Jackson as “Uncle Sam” and being surrounded by an all-black dancing crew dressed in red, white, and blue.
Jackson’s Uncle Sam character was the most iconic part of the whole show. After performing “Squabble Up,” Jackson appeared on screen and called it, “Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto.” Then, after performing two relaxed songs with pop icon SZA, Jackson said, “That’s what America wants — nice, calm.”
The cherry on top of this performance that called out racism in the U.S.? The president himself was in attendance to see the whole thing with his own two eyes.
It is delightful to see more companies and artists using the ginormous platform of the Super Bowl to get across messages America needs to hear. With viewership only increasing as the years go on, expect to see more and more creative and influential uses of the Super Bowl’s platform.