THE BLUE AND WHITE

Every year, the Super Bowl and its entertainment and marketing value brings together hundreds of millions of people, businesses, and celebrities. Here’s what happened at this year’s Super Bowl 60.

Taking place in Levi’s Stadium in the Bay Area, this year’s Super Bowl featured the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots, making it only the 2nd Super Bowl in the last 6 years to not involve the Kansas City dynasty. The game was relatively uneventful, due to offensive struggles from both sides. After 3 quarters, the score was 12-0 in favour of Seattle, making it the second game in Super Bowl history where no touchdowns were scored in the first 3 quarters. No Super Bowl game has ever involved a team being shut out, a trend that continued here as both teams rallied to make the final score 29-13 for Seattle. The Patriots now lead the NFL in Super Bowl losses at 6. However, they are tied with the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl wins, also at 6. Kenneth Walker III won the MVP award with his rushed 135 yards, making it the 2nd time in the last 6 years where a non-quarterback has won the MVP. 

In addition to the 70,823 people at Levi’s Stadium, Super Bowl LX averaged 124.9 million online viewers, with a peak of 137.8 million. NFL executives chose Bad Bunny to perform at the Apple Music Halftime Show, wishing to grow the international and Latino audience. Afterwards, his Apple Music streams went up by 7x, showing the impact of Super Bowl exposure. 

The Super Bowl also has massive environmental implications, so PepsiCo have started an initiative this year to combat this. In partnership with the stadium, they incorporated reusable cups and AI recycling units to encourage waste management within the stadium. However, this doesn’t address the large volume of planes travelling between cities, so more initiatives are required in the future. 

Lastly, YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, known online as Mr. Beast, unveiled a commercial with Salesforce to give away $1,000,000 to the first person to solve the puzzle. No one has solved it as of now, but we do know that it is split into some number of stages, similar to the Cicada 3301 hunt. In total, it is expected to contain more than 100 individual puzzles.