Greenbacks & quarterbacks

If you ever doubted that television is ‘king’ when it comes to sport, think again. This is a fact and there is no better example of this than the event that is currently mesmerizing the entire USA. It is Super Bowl week and hundreds of hours of introspection will be dedicated over the next six days to the playbooks of the two teams that will lock horns next Sunday in Miami.

The New Orleans Saints will experience the spine tingling atmosphere of a Super Bowl for the very first time since 1967 whilst the twice victorious and vastly experienced Indianapolis Colts will be expected to gallop home. Drew Brees of the Saints versus the mercurial quarterback Peyton Manning. That’s what this game will be all about as they attempt to out rifle each other on what is being tagged Super Sunday.

Brees by the way slaps a playing salary of US $10 million into his bank account each year whilst Manning deposits some US $14 million….. and both can double that at least when you throw in a couple of high profile endorsement packages.

There are 305 million people in the United States and come Sunday a third of them will be glued to their television screens fanatically supporting one of the finalists as the event called the “biggest game in the world” unfolds. Somehow all in the US have conveniently forgotten about the FIFA World Cup Final, but then again Americans are pretty self absorbed!

The true picture regarding that comparison is that an accumulative TV audience of some 28 billion tunes in at some stage during a month long FIFA World Cup and well over 1.1 billion watch the final out of a global population of 6.8 billion.

That small matter aside, it still gets the big corporations salivating and digging deep into their wallets, even in these economic times. The Super Bowl is and always has been the flashing beacon of advertising revenue and for the host broadcaster in the US, Super Bowl XLIV will be no different. As has been the case over the last few years it will be televised live on CBS come 18h30 Eastern Time on Sunday the 7th of February 2010.

Remarkably, although close to 100 million people will be watching this game stateside, roughly 70% of those will have their interest only stimulated when the on field action stops. That’s when the commercials kick into play. In total, 45 minutes of advertisements will fill TV screens throughout the game. Each 30 second ad will cost on average US $2.7 million which converts to over ZAR 20 million. That means that next weekend during the event CBS will benefit financially to the tune of US $243 million or ZAR 1.8 billion.

Did I say this game will be all about the shootout of two enormously talented quarterbacks as they strain every sinew of muscle to strive for yardage?

Not so much ….. it’s also about the greenbacks.

Show me the money!!