Approximately 113 million people watched Super Bowl LVII on February 12.  The Super Bowl is the biggest football game of the year and is an event attended by fans of the game as well as the rich and famous.  This year it was held in Arizona with the cheapest tickets skyrocketing to more than $5,000.  The Kansas City Chiefs played the Philadelphia Eagles and both teams this year had dynamic quarterbacks with Patrick Mahomes leading the Chiefs and Jalen Hurts leading the Eagles. 

Surprisingly, the world has gone a full year with no Britany and Patrick Mahomes drama as Patrick’s wife is very active on social media. 

 This was the first Super Bowl that had two brothers on opposing teams.  Jason Kelce wore the Eagles uniform and his younger brother Travis was suited up as a Chief.  Their mother, Donna, was decked out in a custom-made jacket featuring half Chiefs and half Eagles as well as one Chiefs-themed sneaker and one Eagles-themed. 

The game was predicted to be a close, high scoring game. 

With Kansas City only a four hour drive to the west, many St. Louisians were cheering on the Chiefs as the hometown favorite.

Sophomore Elenor Schaeke declared she was rooting for the Chiefs.

  “I am rooting for the Chiefs.  Ever since the Rams left, they have been my team,” Elenor said.  

Even if the Super Bowl or football isn’t a favorite to watch, there are other good reasons millions of people watch this game, including the memorable commercials.  Advertisers spent up to a whopping $7 million for every 30 seconds of commercial time during this year’s game, betting on an opportunity to get their product in the minds of the millions of viewers. With more than 50commercials running during the game, there was a serious amount of money invested in advertising. There were many different marketing tactics ranging from humor to serious to using big-name celebrities to sell products.

 Roku had a commercial that made it seem as if the machine was malfunctioning. Senior Sophie Mains fell for the faux-interactive storyline.

 “Everyone was screaming at me because they thought I had changed the channel,” Sophie said.

There is usually some controversy with the Super Bowl halftime show. The hype building up to the musical performance at the biggest game of the year starts months before the actual date. This year the halftime show was performed by Rihanna with no wardrobe malfunctions or dancing missteps.  She wore a red flowing outfit and was surrounded by energetic dancers dressed in white. She performed 12 songs on a see-through platform suspended by cables several stories in the air.  RiRi built up some suspense before the show saying that she was thinking about bringing a guest and then announced her pregnancy right after the game.

Everyone was expecting a musical guest, not a baby announcement, but it explained her flowing jumpsuit designed to hide her baby bump.  

Senior Elizabeth Beldner loved the halftime show. 

“I would be scared to be that high off the ground while pregnant.  I thought the set list was really good and she picked such good songs for her set.”

The game itself actually lived up to the hype.  It was a close game with lots of scoring that ended with a last-minute field goal by Kansas City to win t

he game 38-35. The quarterbacks both played great and led the offense for their teams to the exciting end.  The planning for the next Super Bowl has already begun and Las Vegas will be the host city to their first big game ever.