This Sunday, Feb. 7, the world’s most-watched televised sporting event will go gold for its 50th anniversary. The shimmering jersey logos, field markers, footballs, a golden “50” trophy, and other embellishments in Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., will be a far cry from the look and feel of the first Super Bowl, held 50 years ago on January 15, 1967, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in California.
The evolution of the Super Bowl is reflective of the changes in sports culture over the last five decades, which have been immense, according to John Lord, Ph.D., professor of sports marketing at Saint Joseph’s University.
“Interest in sports has exploded over the last 50 years,” says Lord, “and fans are more emotionally invested than anytime in history.” He attributes the growing affinity to a few phenomena that have increased the opportunity for fan engagement: the saturation of sports on Cable television, the advent of the Internet, the rise of fantasy sports and sports gambling, and the domination of social media.
“Fifty years ago, sports were just games, singular events,” says Lord. “Now, they are more of a sport and entertainment cocktail with lots of pageantry and efforts to hold your attention past the few hours of a game.”
Sports franchises aren’t the only ones focused on fan engagement.
According to IEG Sponsorship Report, which has conducted research on sponsorship spending annually since 1984, 70 percent of North American sponsorship dollars were spent on sports in 2015.
“Marketers understand that sports evoke nostalgia, a social identity and a self concept,” says Stephanie A. Tryce, J.D., Lord’s colleague and assistant professor of sports marketing at Saint Joseph’s.
For large-scale annual and social sporting events, like the Super Bowl, this especially rings true.
“There isn’t definitive research to prove a significant impact of standalone Super Bowl ads on increased purchase intentions,” says Tryce. “But when marketers implement layered marketing techniques like teasers ads, social media strategies which engage fans in conversations and real-time marketing during the telecast, they can amplify their messages in the marketplace.
Unlike ads, sponsorships offer an opportunity for brands to build emotional connections with fans through activation, but authenticity and appreciation for a fan culture is key to a successful partnership.”
A seasoned expert in both the sports and food marketing industries, John Lord, Ph.D., founded the sports marketing program at Saint Joseph’s University. The author of Bill Giles and Baseball (2014), Lord’s research has been published in the NFPA Journal, Journal of Advertising Research and Journal of Nutrition Education.
Stephanie Tryce, J.D. has expertise in both sports law and sports marketing, and has presented at annual conferences for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, Sport Marketing Association and the Sport and Recreation Law Association. She is the co-author of a study of 10 years of Super Bowl ads, Are you ready for some football…ads? Popular Music in Super Bowl Commercials 2005-2014, to be published later this year in the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship.
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