The Inevitable Overload
Ok. So it is the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Superhawks that are going to play for the Lombardi Trophy this year. The Championship game of the National Football League. Or as affectionately referred to by us aliens, "American Football". Or as affectionately referred to by us natives, the "World Championship" game.
The game I can live with, even manage to watch, especially for the fantastic commercials that are a result of the millions poured in by companies who are presumably dazed/drugged into thinking that these spots were worth that much.
But please, oh please, spare me the hype. Spare me the bull that the NFL is the national pastime. Spare me the marketing blitz that would tell me that if I miss the Superbowl, I am missing a part of life. When it has reached the point that the hype and hoopla surrounding the game is bigger than the game, when the media circus surrounding the game has the audacity to criticize a host city for short-comings for a mere game, when the league has the audacity to hold league cities to a ransom, forcing the citizens to pony up a tax to pay for a stadium that will fund their pockets, count me out.
Am I enraged? Of course I am enraged. Especially when I am paying a tax to pay for the new stadium for the backbone-less franchise helmed by the leech named Bill Bidwill just so they can put spineless spiritless teams on the field and wallow in mediocrity, while those fat cows fatten themselves even more.
In a sense, the next two weeks will mean a lot more time for myself - what with all the time I will save from not having to watch ESPN drum the Super-hype-bown in to my head...
Thank God for small mercies...
3 comments:
Having all the hype is part and parcel of having a (successful) professional sports. I hope all this hype will bring in a lot of revenue to (our) city next year! They say that every super bowl generates millions of revenue for the local governments.
At least here we know who gets the money (like AZ Cardinals) and blame them and get angry with them. But in India, they hype on the basis of patriotism and somebody swipes all the money. No wonder they fight to get into the BCCI!
You may like this! This is from Yahoo Finance.
While there is no doubt that the Super Bowl is one of the marquee sporting events of the year, according to some academics, the economic value of the event to local economies may be overblown. "Super Bowl or Super (Hyper)bole"(PDF), a research paper by Robert Baade of Lake Forest College and Victor Matheson of Williams College, looked at the economic impact of Super Bowls from 1970 to 2001. While studies sponsored by the NFL and local boosters often tout an economic impact between 300M and 400M USD, Baade and Matheson found the average impact is only 92M USD.
One of the reasons for the wide difference in value between the studies is the difference between "net" and "gross" receipts. The booster surveys typically focus on the total "gross" receipts of the event or the total amount of money spent by event participants. A "net" calculation of receipts would take into account the total amount spent by attendees as well as the potential amount of lost receipts caused by residents or tourists who change their spending habits because of the congestion caused by the event.
Thanks for that update dude, now I have more ammo against the Superbowl hype!
Seriously though, $92 million for a one-day event is still huge, I think. Would really like to know how much economic impact is generated by the NBA Finals and the MLB World Series...would probably make for an interesting comparison of the people's attitudes towards those games...
Post a Comment