Sunday, February 3, 2008

Superbowl Sunday

A man had 50 yard line tickets for the Super Bowl. As he sits down, a
man comes down and asked the man if anyone is sitting in the seat next
to him.

"No", he said, "the seat is empty".

"This is incredible", said the man. "Who in their right mind would have
a seat like this for the Super Bowl , the biggest sport event in the
world, and not use it ?"

Somberly, the man says, "Well... The seat actually belongs to me. I was
supposed to come here with my wife, but she passed away. This is the
first Super Bowl we have not been together since we got married in
1967."

"Oh I'm sorry to hear that. That's terrible. But couldn't you find
someone else - a friend or relative or even a neighbor to take the
seat?"

The man shakes his head, "No. They're all at the funeral."

5 comments:

tangobaby said...

That's a joke, right?

;-)

I can only watch football when it's on TV because otherwise I can't tell when someone gets a first down. I like the yellow line to help me out.

AlexTangoFuego said...

I hope it's a joke. Now after the game, it seems a bit cruel and not so funny anymore.

msHedgehog said...

The biggest sport event in whose world, exactly? ;)

AlexTangoFuego said...

Hi mshedgehog!

I'm not a big sports fan - we all know tango is my thing.

But, I just did a little google research and here are the facts:

$9.5 billion (USD) in ancillary spending by consumers as a direct result of the SuperBowl - new TV sets, t-shirts, hats, mugs, food, drink, etc....

$450 million (USD) in direct local economic benefits as a result of the game itself - travel, hotel rooms, restaurants, bars, etc...

$50 million (USD) in advertising spent on airtime during the game - $2.7 million per 30 second spot...

Roughly 112,000 people in attendance at the stadium...doesn't sound like many...

But 137 million television viewers does...

So, acknowledging that the SuperBowl has very little attraction/interest outside the U.S., I still think it's accurate that it is the single biggest sporting event in the world - both in terms of dollar impact $10billion plus - and number of viewers - all for one game - on only one night.

I dunno, maybe football (soccer) is bigger in the U.K. and E.U. than I realize...?

Perhaps the multi-day run of the Olympics is bigger - when you count construction of new sporting venues, arenas, new rail lines, new airports, etc. that cities do to "spruce up" before an Olympics.

And again...the post was a joke that a friend sent me...meant to be funny...not necessarily accurate...

msHedgehog said...

So, 137 million viewers would put it a bit higher than the Olympic Games opening ceremony, probably a bit lower than a European Cup final, depending on who's playing, and somewhere between a third and a half of a World Cup Final, according to this Google Answer.

So, that's quite high.

Of course, none of those figures are very reliable; all of them could be hype. I've seen some very eye-popping figures for US Basketball. And it's not easy to measure this stuff in the first place.

112,000 people in the stadium is a VERY big stadium. A typical big-club european stadium that fills every week would be 80,000; the Nou Camp at Barcelona is 90,000. For more than 100,000 you're talking Melbourne Cricket Ground.