Las Vegas Hit The Jackpot with The 2024 Super Bowl....
For the first time ever, Las Vegas was able to host the Super Bowl creating a huge economic impact for the city of Nevada....
Happy New Week,
Yesterday was definitely a day for the sporting books, with Ivory Coast winning the 2023 African Cup of Nations, and the Kansas City Chiefs winning The 2024 Super Bowl for the second year in a row. The Super Bowl is a highly anticipated event in the world of American sports, and brands always use this opportunity to raise awareness and attract more customers.
For the first time ever, Las Vegas was able to be the host city for the Super Bowl. For many years the NFL have tried to avoid hosting the Super Bowl in Las Vegas due gambling concerns. With recent progress being made in sports betting across the United States, and sports betting now legal in 38 out of the 50 United States, the NFL finally gave in. As a result, the Super Bowl 58 was one of the biggest Super Bowls ever. As you can imagine, sports bars, casinos, restaurants and the Las Vegas strip was filled with American Football fans from all over the world, creating a huge economic impact for the city of Nevada.
The famous Las Vegas strip was transformed into a football-themed extravaganza, with giant screens displaying highlights from past Super Bowls, and iconic landmarks illuminated with the colours of the competing teams.
The newly famous $2.3 billion MSG sphere was used to display a variety Super Bowl themed content on the run up to the Super Bowl
With Grammy award winning singer Taylor Swift dating two time Super Bowl winner Travis Kelce, she was a huge focal point during the NFL's biggest night. Various flight tracking platforms such as FlightRadar24, JetSpy, and social media channels helped fans track her 12 hour flight from Tokyo to Las Vegas ensuring that she made it back in time to the US to watch her boyfriend play in the 2024 Super Bowl. This once again confirms the interconnectivity between sports and entertainment. Taylor Swift's enormous fan base brought a new, young and more diverse audience to the NFL’s Super Bowl.
Another huge focal point of The 2024 Super Bowl was R&B star Usher. Following a successful Vegas residency last year, Apple Music brought in Usher to perform at The Super Bowl halftime show. Every year, Apple Music pays the NFL $50 million to sponsor the Super Bowl halftime show, surprisingly Usher isn’t receiving any of that money, instead he’ll perform free. The Super Bowl halftime show is watched by millions around the world and Usher is able to leverage this exposure to gain followers, sell tickets and increase his streaming numbers for his newly released album ‘Coming Home’ which he dropped last week. Usher will be joining the likes of Prince, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, The Rolling Stones and Rihanna as artists who have performed at the Super Bowl.
With the Super Bowl being a huge cultural sporting moment, we saw a lot of brands leverage this opportunity to bring in top celebrities for their Super Bowl commercials. Dunkin Doughnuts brought out some big stars in their ‘The DunKings’ Super Bowl ad featuring Ben Affleck, Tom Brady, Matt Damon, Jack Harlow, Jennifer Lopez and Fat Joe. Uber Eats Super Bowl commercial was ‘Don’t Forget UberEats’ with Jenniffer Aniston, her friends costar David Schwimmer, David and Victoria Beckham, and halftime performer Usher. Lionel Messi had his first ever Super Bowl commercial with beer brand Michelob Ultra and Queen B, Beyoncé had her very own Super Bowl ad, ‘Can’t B broken’ with Verizon.
The Super Bowl is more than just a sporting finals event, brands know that the whole of America and beyond will be watching and utilse this as an opportunity to activate around it. Once again, the rest of the sporting world could learn a lot from this, especially brands that failed to activate around the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, which brought in 2 Billion viewers from around the world!