Why is it becoming trendy to watch the Super Bowl in Australia? Who is the Australian playing in it this year? And when did the half-time show get to be (almost) a bigger deal than the game itself? EXPLAINER
What's the Super Bowl? It's the grand final of American football but unlike with the AFL or NRL in Australia, American football is popular across the entire nation, from Florida to Alaska, and the big game is watched by about 100 million people – almost a third of the populationThe name comes from the early days of American football.
In 1923, one of the biggest games on the college football calendar, the Tournament East–West game, was moved to the new Rose Bowl Stadium in California and came to be referred to as the “Rose Bowl game”. Other major college football games began using “Bowl” as a suffix. When the professional title game needed a name, the then-owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, Lamar Hunt, suggested Super Bowl, reportedly after seeing one of his children playing with a super ball toy. The name stuck.Getty ImagesThe game will start at 10.30am on February 3 AEST at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. Because the game is always in late January or early February, during the US winter, it is held in either a warm climate state such as Florida or California or in an indoor stadium. Hosting it is a big deal and cities bid in advance. Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida will host the game in 2021; Los Angeles is building a new stadium for it in 2022; it will be in Glendale in Arizona in 2023 and in New Orleans in 2024. In the US, the game kicks off on a Sunday evening – making it prime-time family entertainment in the States. It's the most-watched TV event in the US every year. The biggest audience was 114 million in 2015 when the New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks. Some 99 million Americans watched the Patriots beat the Los Angeles Rams last year. Of the top 20 most-watched US television broadcasts ever, 19 are Super Bowls – the other is the 1983 finale of the comedyAround the world, the Super Bowl is the second most-watched single-day sporting event after the UEFA Champions League final, with somewhere up to 100 million people tuning in outside America. As they watch the game, Americans consume an absolutely gargantuan amount of food. The US National Chicken Council estimates 1.3 billion chicken wings are eaten – in the form of deep-fried, cayenne pepper-coated Buffalo wings – in addition to 4 million pizzas, more than 13 million kilograms of potato chips and more than 54 million kilograms of avocados used to make guacamole for nachos.Why they pay him the bucks: Russell Wilson throws to Doug Baldwin for a 10-yard touchdown at Super Bowl XLVIII. Credit: NFLAside from the helmets with face masks, the hulking shoulder pads and the pants-meets-socks legwear, the game is similar to rugby league, at least in some ways. The attacking team has a limited number of plays to either reach the other team’s goal line, which is a touchdown, or kick the ball away. A touchdown is worth six points, and a field goal – kicked from near the goal line – is worth three.These athletes are big brands in the US. Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, the highest-paid player in the league, earns $US35 million a year – excluding sponsor endorsements, which would more than double that amount. When you include endorsements, the only athletes who make more money anywhere in the world are a handful of European footballers, Mexican boxer Canelo Alvarez and Swiss tennis superstar Roger Federer, according toEach team has up to $US188 million to spend on player salaries each year across their 53-man roster and on anyone who may be "released" during the season. The most ruthless example of this was in 2012, when Patriots coach Bill Belichick let go of wide receiver Tiquan Underwood and signed defensive lineman Alex Silvestro the night before the Super Bowl.list of the 50 most valuable sports franchises in the world in 2019, National Football League teams make up more than half the entries – and there are only 32 teams. The Dallas Cowboys top the list with a net worth of $US5 billion ahead of the New York Yankees baseball team at $US4.6 billion . San Francisco 49ers players celebrate after qualifying for the Super Bowl by beating the Green Bay Packers.The Kansas City Chiefs are back for their first appearance since 1970, led by Andy Reid – who many regard as the best coach to never win a Super Bowl – and quarterbacked by Patrick Mahomes, who was voted the NFL’s most valuable player in the 2018-19 season.They play the San Francisco 49ers, named after the 1849 California Gold Rush. The last time San Francisco made it to the Super Bowl was in 2013, when they were led by quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was thrust into the media spotlight in 2016 when he refused to stand for the national anthem in protest at police brutality during the Black Lives Matter campaign. His action gave rise to a cluster of similar protests that prompted US Vice-President Mike Pence to walk out of one gameAfter being released in 2017 and failing to land with another team, he sued the NFL, claiming the heavily conservative ownership group was blackballing him from the sport. The governing body paid Kaepernick an undisclosed amount last year and he remains unsigned. The 49ers were one of the league’s worst teams last year but through some shrewd acquisitions in the player market and the NFL rookie draft they became a formidable force this year.Wait, there’s an Australian in the Super Bowl? You bet. Wishnowsky, 27, will become the second Australian ever to play in a Super Bowl. The first was former Geelong left-footer Ben Graham, who quit the AFL to become a punter with the New York Jets in 2005 and who was playing with the Arizona Cardinals when they lost the Super Bowl in 2009. Graham, who has come full circle to be football operations manager for the Western Bulldogs in Melbourne, is the first Australian to captain an American professional sports team .Australian Mitch Wishnowsky flattens a Broncos returner in August 2019. Source: San Francisco 49ers More recently, a pipeline to the big leagues has been established through kicking program Prokick Australia, which teaches Australians the fundamentals of American football at a much earlier age. As a result, Wishnowsky – who joined up as an adult – and dozens of other Australians have gone over to play college footballWishnowsky signed a four-year, $US3.3 million contract with the 49ers last year, which included a $US765,000 signing bonus. "While Americans grow up wanting to throw the ball," he says on the 49ers website, "we grow up trying to kick 60-yard goals. Sure, the techniques are slightly different, but the swing of your leg is pretty much the same. We have that muscle memory drilled into us from a young age." The first Australian to play in the NFL was Colin Ridgway, who competed in high jump in the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, and then went on to become a track-and-field star at an American college where he was discovered by the Dallas Cowboys.Several others have made the grade at other positions. Ex-rugby player Colin Scotts was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals in 1987 and, of course, former NRL star Jarryd Hayne played a handful of games for the 49ers in 2015. Two non-punters are currently on NFL teams: defensive lineman Adam Gotsis from Melbourne and offensive lineman Jordan Mailata from Sydney. After a standout college career, Queenslander Jesse Williams is the only Australian to be part of a winning Super Bowl team but he wasn't able to play in the game itself – injuries prevented him from ever taking the field as a professional. Despite this, he was given a championship ring by the Seattle Seahawks when they won in 2014.How popular is the Super Bowl in Australia? There are plenty of ticketed events for fans of the event around Australia, including the Luna Bowl at Luna Park in Sydney, which charges patrons $150 each for four hours of unlimited drinks, food, prize draws and special guests. "I thought that American-type things like the Super Bowl and Halloween were getting bigger and bigger in Australia," says Luna Park sales manager Billy Andonovski. "I knew it would work from a business point of view but I was surprised how quickly it grew." The first Luna Bowl event in 2017 sold just over 300 tickets; this year organisers have sold more than 1000. In Melbourne, a handful of pubs and restaurants are offering patrons early morning buckets of chicken wings, hot dogs, bagels, chips and coleslaw washed down with beverages ranging from beer to Jack Daniel's – and that's before the main game starts on the big flat-screens. Australia's interest in American sports took off on a popular scale in the early 1990s when basketballer Michael Jordan was one of the biggest names in sport. Since then, both the NFL and National Basketball Association have become hugely popular, particularly with millennials. While basketball always had a presence, there are now strong state leagues for American football around the country., the product was a smash hit in the US and proved hugely popular in Australia when it was rolled out on ESPN a couple of years ago.The Australian Outback is the representative team that competes every four years in the International Federation of American Football World Cup, which began in 1999. Wollongong will host the event in 2023. The most popular team in Australia is the New England Patriots, from the north-east of the US, largely because they have been the dominant force in the sport in the US over the past two decades, winning six Super Bowls between 2001 and 2019 . The Patriots’ coach, Bill Belichick, is widely considered to be the best coach in the sport’s history. Thousands of Australians also subscribe to online streaming services that show basketball and football games from the US. Gambling companies say young people are betting on American sports at a higher rate than any other market. The NBA is the sport most bet on in Australia. Speaking of gambling, you can bet on just about every single aspect of the Super Bowl: from how long pop star Demi Lovato's rendition ofwill be , what songs Jennifer Lopez and Shakira will sing first, how the opening coin toss will land, and what colour the Gatorade – another masterful stroke of Super Bowl product placement – will be when the winning team dumps it over the head of their coach, as has become the custom.The half-time concert has been a tradition since the inaugural Super Bowl in 1967 but usually involved just marching bands until the 1990s when it became almost as big a deal as the game itself. The boy band New Kids On the Block headlined in 1991 when Disney sponsored the half-time show. Cuban-American pop star Gloria Estefan followed in 1992. Michael Jackson moonwalking across the stage in 1993 led to a ratings spike and motivated the NFL to continue to pursue top-level talent with bells and whistles stagingBands such as U2, Coldplay, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Destiny's Child have headlined as well as Paul McCartney, Prince and Sting. The show is a win-win for advertisers and organisers as well as the musicians, who are not paid but whose music sales and popularity often spike as a result of the exposure. It's arguable that 2004's “wardrobe malfunction” known as Nipplegate, featuring Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson – whose costume ripped to expose her nipple – is remembered by more people than any football-related incident that's ever taken place at a Super Bowl.A 30-second TV spot will cost $US5.6 million . President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg have each shelled out $US11 million for 60 seconds. Both Pepsi and Coca-Cola will run ads as will multiple car and beer companies. This isn’t just a case of paying a lot of money to air an existing ad. Most businesses create an ad specifically for the Super Bowl – paying celebrities to boost the brand as well. Talk-show host Jimmy Fallon stars in a beer commercial this year, for instance, and '90s star Molly Ringwald, a Gen X favourite, spruiks Mexican avocados . The cash may be well worth it if the ad can hit the right note. In 2012, Honda paid actor Matthew Broderick to recreate scenes from the hit 1980s movie. People still talk about Michael Jordan and Larry Bird playing basketball for a Big Mac in McDonald’s 1993 commercial, and Apple's 1984 ad that was directed by filmmaker Ridley Scott. Budweiser’sad brought the popular greeting to a global audience while spawning one of the most annoying songs of all time.San Francisco 49ers take selfies after arriving in Miami ahead of the Super Bowl.If you'd like some expert background on an issue or a news event, drop us a line at
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