“It’s called football! It’s called football!” The American fans at the recent World Cup in Qatar are cheering with all their might. They are shouting about their football, football, as it was called, is called and will be called by the rest of the world, view a sport that has been trying to break into the elite for almost three decades, but without success.They tried, they organized, they spent money, hoping to make another sport their own, and the truth is that football has come from obscurity to be considered the fourth most popular sport sports for Americans after football, basketball and baseball.However, no matter how high he reached, football is the only one on the planet USA.And today he celebrates with Super Bowl. Wrestling is a rite of passage for every American. This is not just a sporting event of the year, but a spectacle that fits perfectly into the culture of the country. Families and friends will gather around the table. TVs will be set up in bars and restaurants. What will Americans watch today? In addition to the final between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles (1:30 a.m. Monday), they will be treated to, among other things, a super show featuring artists such as Chris Stapleton and Rihanna; a mini-concert “built into” a major sporting event.

It all starts in the 60s. The NFL (National Football League) has been the dominant league since the 1920s in the US, having established itself in the American mind. In the late 1950s, a group of businessmen who did not find suitable ground to penetrate the conservative NFL founded a new league, the AFL (American Football League), which in its early days did not have the quality of its competitors, but something else: money and fresh ideas. Intense competition, when one league tries to “steal” something from another, leads to a rapid increase in the salaries of players. What seemed inevitable finally happened in 1970 when the two leagues merged. However, already in 1967, the best teams in each league play in the final to determine the super champion of the season. Somehow, on January 15, 1967, at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, in the presence of approximately 62,000 spectators, the Super Bowl was born with rivals Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers. Despite several empty seats in the stadium, the number of spectators is impressive and is the largest of all sporting events. Fans from Kansas and Wisconsin are having a hard time moving to a neutral venue, but now almost every home has a TV. About 26 million Americans tune into their receivers that day. The Super Cup is getting bigger every year. Now each final attracts even more viewers, even bigger TV packages.

The sharp rise in interest in television creates new data. In the first case, 30 seconds of advertising per hour of the day. they cost $37,500, a figure that skyrocketed to $300,000 in the early 80s and reached about $800,000 in the early 90s. This year it will reach 7 million dollars! But how did we arrive at these amounts? 1984 is considered a landmark year for … the Super Bowl break. It was then that about 80 million viewers saw an advertisement on their screens, which was supposed to change the fate of both the product itself and the commercials of the following years. In Ridley Scott’s Orwellian-themed production, audiences are given a promise in front of a shattered Big Brother: “On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce you to the Macintosh. And then you will understand why 1984 will not look like 1984 at all. The ad made a splash. It was exactly what Steve Jobs wanted his company to have in every American home. Other landmark announcements follow. In 1992, Cindy Crawford seduces young and old by drinking Pepsi, in 1993 Michael Jordan and Larry Bird place all sorts of improbable bets while winning food from McDonald’s, in 2010 Betty White plays football as… Betty White before eating Snickers; in 2011, baby Darth Vader tries to control the objects in his house like his father does with his Volkswagen. At the Super Bowl halftime, a small revolution began, and not the only one.

The role of television in a sporting event fits perfectly into American culture.

Spectators in America, when they go to the stadium, don’t expect to just see the game and come home. He wants to embrace every second he spends there. In the early Super Bowls, the US national anthem was played by local bands, and the audience was usually entertained by university bands during halftime.

The entertainment industry began to see the huge Super Bowl field also in the 1980s, when Diana Ross sang the national anthem in 1982. Gradually the artists became more and more famous, the show more and more glamorous, the messages more and more resonant. January 1991, Gulf War. The national anthem is performed by Whitney Houston in an orchestration, which was later released as a single to financially support soldiers and their families. During the break, New Kids on the Block perform, and soon after, Mickey Mouse bursts onto the stage, thanking the American troops. The show is cut short and US President George W. Bush appears on the giant screens at Tampa Stadium in Florida, delivering his own message. This political-artistic… lettuce fascinates Americans.

Two years later, the biggest halftime show will take place, where Michael Jackson wows 100,000 people at the Rose Bowl in California. Diana Ross, The Blues Brothers, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, Rolling Stones, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, 50 Cent, Lady Gaga, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez. Everyone becomes part of the Super Bowl show. After about 30 minutes (the usual break in games is 13 minutes, but doubled for the needs of the Halftime show), the biggest stars of the American music industry have another chance to send their messages live almost all over the world. Worldwide. Beyonce in 2016 appeared in costumes reminiscent of the Black Panthers, which caused an uprising of various far-right organizations. The waters in Trump’s America will churn in 2020 with two Hispanics, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, protesting Trump’s policies on illegal immigrants and especially the treatment of children. The two sing “Let’s Get Loud” along with Lopez’s 11-year-old daughter, who appears in a cage along with dozens of other Hispanic children.

However, not everything is always rosy. In 2004, Janet Jackson’s career took a turn for the worse, because in her duet with Justin Timberlake, one of her breasts was visible for a split second. The racist and sexist attacks she receives are over the top and she stays on the sidelines for quite some time knowing the other side of the coin.

Super Bowl Madness by the Numbers