Super Bowl Spending

The Super Bowl is here again, which means its Money Time… ummm… errrr… Game Time! If the NFL were a pimp, the Super Bowl would be its prostitute, and its top one at that. The Super Bowl makes millions for the NFL and many of the losses from smaller turnouts through out the year, can be recouped in one game. But the Super Bowl is not only working for the NFL, it’s working for everybody. It is estimated that the Super Bowl is worth about 500 MILLION dollars to its host city. This is thanks to huge boost in tourism that the big game creates. This means business for hotels, food and beverage, tourism, casinos, souvenir shops, and anything else that town has to offer. It also boosts a cities earning potential for years to come because it creates hype around that city. Moreover, it’s not just the host city that sees an economic boom that day; bars, restaurants, casinos, grocery stores, liquor stores, cable providers, businesses all over the country see a boost in sales.

And then of course there are the commercials. With a 30-second commercial costing around $3.5 million it better have some results, and they usually do. About 110 million households, plus restaurants and bars view the Super Bowl game each year. You even have some people who watch the game just for the commercials. For this reason, a good or bad Super Bowl commercial could jumpstart the year for a company or send it on a slow crawl back up the economic ladder. A problem that many companies face in their Super Bowl commercials is over-production. This one commercial means a lot and they want it to be the best thing ever, but sometimes those expectations can get in the way and you see flops like 2012’s H&M David Beckham Bodywear commercial: an underwear line for men, that was marketed to women. I know very few men that have the desire to see Beckham pose, by himself, in his underwear, but that’s what they did.

One company that we have seen consistently get it right is Frito-Lay with their Doritos commercials. Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrics, said that their "'Crash' ads are really not talking about Doritos at all. They're more like sitcoms. And viewers respond to them because they've got a certain authenticity, aren't overly produced and didn't of through five approval committees at the marketer or several remakes by the ad agency." Hopefully they can live up to these same standards this year and other companies will step up their game.

So grocery stores, waiters, and bartenders rejoice! The time is almost here.

New Orleans get ready! It's going to be raining dollar bills!

Sunday is just a few days away and soon we will see which companies get it wrong and who's climbing to the the top of the money tree.

Briana Scales