Reading business reporters’ coverage of Super Bowl XL is kind of like watching a game of peewee football: there aren’t many offensive formations and, time after time, the coaches call the same predictable play. On three — preview of zany Super Bowl ad. Ready, break!
But every once in a while, amid the slew of columns pondering the halftime show’s line-up and the umpteenth article asking whether Detroit can properly host a Super Bowl, a fresh story pops up with a little of the old reportorial razzle-dazzle.
Yesterday, for instance, writing in the New York Times, Alan B. Krueger pulled off an interesting piece on the nascent futures market for Super Bowl tickets.
“Futures markets have existed for decades for commodities like pork bellies and oil, whose prices fluctuate over time,” notes Krueger. “The advantage of a futures market is that it allows the buyer and seller to lock in a price, and in that way reduce uncertainty.”
“There is great uncertainty surrounding sporting events like the Super Bowl, including whether a fan’s team will make it to the game and the price of tickets on the secondary market,” he adds. “Stephen K. Happel and Marianne M. Jennings of Arizona State University proposed a futures market for tickets to major events to reduce risk in 2002. Their idea is finally coming to fruition.”
Krueger goes on to explain lucidly the tricky economics of the burgeoning marketplace. Along the way he introduces us to Joe Kocott, a die-hard Steelers fan, who in January bought 18 futures contracts for Super Bowl tickets should the Steelers make the big game. As a result, Kocott ended up paying an average of $350 a ticket while elsewhere fans were shelling out upwards of $2500.
“The relatively low price of futures contracts gives moderate-income fans a chance to attend marquee sporting events,” concludes Krueger, “which is a welcome counterbalance to the many corporations and lobbyists that often snap up tickets.”
Speaking of ticket grabs, the Pittsburg Post-Gazette also managed to break away from the perfunctory Super Bowl playbook with an interesting piece this week looking at what happened to all the tickets given out by the Steelers organization.
“About 11,000 tickets were made available to the Steelers to dispense among players, season ticket holders, sponsors and fans for Sunday’s showdown,” Steelers spokesman Bert Lauton told the Post-Gazette, “and most were quickly snapped up by Steelers corporate sponsors and suite holders.”
“However,” added the Post-Gazette, “unlike your typical fan who likely would be telling everyone and their mother if they were able to land coveted tickets, the rules in corporate-dom are different. Ask media relations people who are going, how many and where they are staying, and the response generally is a deafening silence — and perhaps a little spin.”
“It seems many firms love to partake in the annual football fest, they just don’t like to talk about it,” concluded the Post-Gazette. “In other words, the trick is to see, but not to be seen.”
Finally, of the gazillion Super Bowl humor pieces penned over the past week, we can only, in good faith, recommend one.
Earlier this week, writing in the Los Angeles Times, Sam Farmer reminded us that it’s not just the big boys of American business — the Budweisers and the Oldsmobiles — who try to profit from the game’s popularity. While seemingly every other writer in America was weighing in on the pros and cons of paying $2.5 million for a 30-second ad during the game, Farmer chose to focus on the smaller players who are just hoping to get onto the field.
“Goop is what my boss calls the barrage of emails from public relations and advertising people who try to glom on to the Super Bowl to pitch their expert, their tell-all book, their wacked-out theory — and somehow relate it to what’s happening on the field,” writes Farmer. “My electronic mailbox has gotten so bloated, I feel like consulting the diet-and-digestion specialist who has offered to tell me ‘how football fans can avoid gassing out their guests at this year’s Super Bowl party.'”
Farmer proceeds to riff off some of these advertising gems, including this one: “In what has become a yearly tradition, Pilot Pen’s Chief Graphology Officer Sheila Kurtz once again picks the winners of the Super Bowl solely from select signatures of AFC & NFC Champion team’s coaches and players.”
On the eve of Super Bowl weekend, our sincere thank you to the graphology department at Pilot Pen. Jokes about the Bud Bowl will never be the same again.
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.