This past year has been difficult for people everywhere. Every rising month seems to come with an unexpected curveball. With Super Bowl Sunday being held in February 2021, this was a big surprise for a lot of people.
Throughout the year 2020 people were forced to transfer to online work, school, and even social gatherings. This past December, the CDC advised everyone to stay at home for the holidays and avoid travel. This made a lot of people wonder what was in store for upcoming months.
The Super Bowl is the biggest and most watched sports game in America and sports fans everywhere were excited to tune in. Mark Gallant of Merrimac, MA said, “With all the chaos of last year, I’m happy to be a part of something that feels normal. Even though it will be a little different without the crowd, it’ll still be fun!” Expectedly so, Super Bowl Sunday 2021 would be completely different from previous years.
The Raymond James Stadium is the home stadium for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and is able to hold over 65,000 people. Since not even close to that many people would be present in the stadium, the NFL planned something interactive for football fans to participate in. This year the NFL offered a deal for 22,000 fans to submit a photo of themselves and have it shown in a real seat at the stadium for the slim price of $100! These fans will also be sent a link to view themselves in the crowd and were put in an auction to potentially win tickets to the Super Bowl in 2022. A portion of the money collected from this was donated to local charities. This was a fun, COVID-19 friendly trend for fans to participate in.
Even with a creative spin and an entertaining halftime show, there was an overwhelming decrease in views on CBS. ESPN.com says “92 million people tuned in… add[ing] in a record number of people who streamed the game online and CBS said the total audience was 96.4 million.” Past years had viewing numbers as high as 100 million making this year a huge surprise to streaming services. A big number of people who watched this past Sunday were over livestream instead of cable; possibly due to the many Zoom Super Bowl parties!
