[ARETE] Sport and Society Super Bowl LVI

[richard crepeau]

Sport and Society for Arete

February 14, 2022



Each new Super Bowl becomes an occasion to confirm the insight of the great American economist from the turn to the 20th century, Thorstein Veblen. It was Veblen who created a vocabulary that enables us to talk with clarity about the Super Bowl in measured and stunningly rich terms: Conspicuous Consumption, Conspicuous Leisure, and my personal favorite, Conspicuous Waste. If the latter was an Olympic Event, the United States of America would be the runaway gold medal winner.

It is always difficult to know where to begin when surveying the Super Bowl, but ticket prices, advertising rates, and gambling offer a nice entry point. Super Bowl ticket prices mirror Dallas owner Jerry Jones’ observation when his stadium opened. Referring to the cost of tickets he said that “only a small percentage of our fans will ever be here.” Tickets for the Super Bowl are expensive and generally beyond the reach of most football fans. Prices always start quite high, and as the sacred day approaches, prices begin to drop.

The average price of a ticket for LVI was $9,496 although you might pick one up in the final days for just over $6,000. VIP tickets were being offered for $147,000, and a twelve-person suite could be had for $940,000. So-Fi Stadium has no Bob Uecker seats. Hotel prices are correspondingly expensive.

There were a number of firsts at LVI as there always are at the Big Game. For the first time, commercials for Crypto Currency and NFT Ads clogged the airwaves. Larry David pimped for a company called FTX in a marginally funny commercial. Also somewhat new are the electric automobile ads with Nissan, BMW, and KIA highly visible. One of these, the ad for Polestar, was voted favorite ad of this year’s telecast according to a Reuter’s survey.

Old standbys, and indeed maybe the oldest standby of all, Anheuser-Busch was on board with one Clydesdale rather than a team. This time around, Bud Light featured a low-carb beer. Sam Adams countered with “Spot the dancing Robo dog.” Celebrities galore sold their NILs to the highest bidder as shamelessly as ever, not to mention superstar athletes who like the celebrities never seem to have enough income streams flowing their way.

As it always does, Gambling on the big game draws a lot of attention for the quantity of bets and the variety of prop bets which seem wilder than ever. The two largest bets in Vegas at Caesar’s Palace were of $5M and $4.5M on the Bengals. One person put done $20 on the Bengals to score exactly four points, or two safeties. The payoff would have been $400,000. There were a raft of wagers on the coin toss, the first to score, the first first-down, the first field-goal and many more mundane wagers. It is estimated that 31.4M Americans placed a Super Bowl wager, laying out $7.61M, an increase of 78 percent from Super Bowl LV.

Another interesting wager involved the Archbishops of Los Angeles and Cincinnati. Bake goods from Porto Bakery in Los Angeles were put up against a popular Cincinnati ice cream brand. The Archbishops also took the opportunity to raise funds for local Catholic schools urging fans to go to a website to donate. Sixty percent of the funds raised will go to the schools in the winning city and forty percent to schools in the losing city.

It should be noted that the Rams, a three and one-half point favorite, did not cover. A bet on the Bengals was a winner, even though Cincinnati was not. So there was a silver lining for some Bengal fans.

Another first came in the always ballyhooed halftime show. For the first time the halftime show was an all-RAP event. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dog, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and 50 Cent presented what was praised on Monday as an excellent show. Some were even comparing it to the Prince halftime which is generally accepted as the best ever. Some observers felt Dr. Dre stole the spotlight. This was the third show produced by Jay-Z and Roc Nation for the NFL. Over the years, the NFL has tried and failed to have a musically relevant show. That was certainly not a problem at LVI.

One moment of controversy or protest came when Eminem took a knee, evoking the memory of Colin Kapernick who is exhibit one in any example of being “cancelled.” Someone pointed out that an NFL sanctioned protest might not really qualify as an authentic protest.

Alternative entertainment was available with the ever-popular Puppy Bowl XVIII hosted, most appropriately, by Snoop Dog, doing double duty on the day. Unfortunately. the cat loving community was left starring at the empty litter box as Hallmark dropped the Kitten Bowl. Feline fanatics hope for its return at Super Bowl LVII.

The game itself had a notable distinction as the two head coaches had the lowest combined age of any two Super Bowl head coaches. Sean McVey is 36 and Zac Taylor is 38, and with the Ram’s win, McVey becomes the youngest winning coach in Super Bowl History. The other notable player being tied to Super Bowl history is Joe Burrow, the Bengals quarterback, who has been drawing comparisons to Broadway Joe Namath, winning QB at Super Bowl III.

Two of the other most prominent examples of Veblen categories were found in the physical edifice of So-Fi Stadium, as well as in the many Super Bowl parties spread across the LA landscape. So-Fi Stadium was built in the spirit of excess at the cost of five billion dollars by the Rams owner, who stiffed the city of St. Louis to move the Rams to Hollywood. It seats 70,048.

The Los Angeles Rams have a long history starting in the late 1940s at the Cleveland Rams, then becoming the Los Angeles Rams before moving to Anaheim and then St. Louis in search of more and more dollars, that same commodity that drew them back to Los Angeles. This gives them a certain symbolic significance.

The most notable feature of SoFi Stadium, which perhaps only Thorstein Veblen would fully appreciate, is the fact that it is an open-air stadium with a roof in a location where rainfall is as rare as humility. Conspicuous Waste anyone?

As always, the most excessive aspect of the Super Bowl came in the form of Super Bowl Parties. There were many, and the cost of admission ran the gamut from $200 to $30,000. The Gold Standard of Super Bowl parties remains the Maxim Party, known for its A-List celebrities and the most beautiful and well-dressed people on the planet. Year after year, it is seen as the very best of the many parties available. It is the Maxim Party that has the top end $30,000 ticket for an on-stage private table for ten. General Admission will get you in the door for $600. According to Maxim, “their vetting process, security, and dress code are all pretty strict. Gotta keep the riffraff out!” Indeed!

One other high-profile party is the “Players Tailgate Party” with an $875 admission fee giving you access to the grounds of Hollywood Park Casino. At least fifty active players were on the grounds for the pregame party and at least ten celebrity chefs provided their menus to those in attendance. For the past six years the “Player’s Tailgate” claims it was voted the best of all the Super Bowl Parties.

Maxim attendees might beg to differ.

On Sport and Society this is Dick Crepeau reminding you that you don’t have to be a good sport to be a bad loser.



Copyright 2022 by Richard C. Crepeau





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