The NFL Super Bowl is one of the greatest mass media events in an otherwise fragmented world. On Sunday night at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, the NFL orchestrated a marketing phenomenon that made it one of the most-watched sporting events in the US. Importantly, the surge in viewership figures made it a home run for the NFL in business terms.
The numbers tell only part of the story. NBCUniversal sold advertising slots at an average of $8m per 30 seconds, with premium placements fetching $10m. The spots sold out eight months before kickoff, in an unprecedented timeline that speaks to the NFL's perfected scarcity value.
But here's what separates the Super Bowl from every other sporting event: it's the only programme where audiences actively want to watch the advertisements. 42% of viewers tune in primarily for the commercials. That's not television. That's cultural currency.
The financial machinery behind this spectacle is staggering. The NFL now generates over $23bn in annual revenue. The league's $110bn television contracts pay each team approximately $433m annually before they sell a single ticket.
Yet the true genius of this year's Super Bowl was in the halftime show. Choosing Bad Bunny to headline was a strategic masterstroke years in the making.
In 2024, the NFL stated plainly that league growth "is mathematically impossible without Latinos." With over 39 million Latino fans in the United States, the demographic imperative was clear. Bad Bunny's performance was the capstone of that strategy.
This year’s halftime show became the most-watched in Super Bowl history, drawing record global viewership and generating nonstop online conversation. It wasn't just watched, it was interpreted, explained, decoded and shared across communities. Search demand for Spanish lessons on Duolingo surged 35 per cent in the hours following the performance. That's not entertainment value; that's cultural impact with measurable commercial consequences.
For Bad Bunny himself, the exposure is extraordinary. Following last year's halftime performance, Kendrick Lamar saw his Spotify streams increase by 173 per cent, with his hit song jumping by 430 per cent. The year before, Usher's streams surged 550 per cent. Rihanna saw a 640 per cent increase. These are career-defining moments of scale that money cannot buy.
Yet the NFL pays halftime performers nothing beyond nominal union fees, whilst spending $10–20 million on production costs. Apple pays the league approximately $50m annually to sponsor the halftime show. It's a structure that benefits everyone: artists get unprecedented global exposure, the NFL receives sponsorship revenue whilst delivering must-watch content, and advertisers gain a captive audience at the precise moment when engagement peaks.
The business model extends far beyond the broadcast. Legal sports betting generated an estimated $1.76bn in wagers for this game alone. Ticket sales contributed nearly $400m. The average NFL franchise is now valued at $7.13bn, double its 2021 valuation.
What makes this particularly instructive for those of us studying global media businesses is how the NFL has turned scarcity into its primary competitive advantage. In an era of infinite content and fractured audiences, they've created the one event that everyone watches simultaneously. That shared cultural moment has become more valuable as it's become rarer.
The league stages just 272 regular-season games and a handful of playoff matches each year. The Super Bowl happens once. You cannot stream it later and participate in the cultural conversation. You cannot fast-forward through the advertisements without missing what people will discuss on Monday. The NFL has made FOMO (fear of missing out) into a mega-billion-dollar business.
Sunday's game demonstrated something profound about modern marketing: authenticity scales better than pandering. Bad Bunny performed almost entirely in Spanish, celebrating Puerto Rican and Latino culture without translation or compromise. The result? A record global audience, including millions watching American football for the first time, drawn by representation and inclusion, rather than despite it.
That's the lesson advertising executives and brand strategists should study. The NFL didn't dilute its cultural bet or hedge with a safer choice. They committed fully to a demographic strategy years in the making, understanding that genuine cultural moments create commercial opportunities that manufactured ones cannot.
As we witness the continued fragmentation of media and attention, the Super Bowl stands as proof that mass audiences haven't disappeared; they've just become more discerning about what deserves their collective attention. The NFL has built a product so compelling that advertisers pay $8m for 30 seconds, performers work for free, and 140 million people willingly watch commercials.
That's not sport. That's a marketing masterstroke and a business model we’d do well to study and admire.
