Around the NFL: Super Bowl Thread

[Ruhskins]

Originally Posted by SmootSmack

Moving the Super Bowl up one day would cause millions of dollars in lost revenue for networks, advertisers, sponsors, host cities

I'm just curious to know how. Would this happen if they made a sudden change? Would there be such a drastic change in viewership that would really cripple revenue?

[SmootSmack]

Originally Posted by Ruhskins

I'm just curious to know how. Would this happen if they made a sudden change? Would there be such a drastic change in viewership that would really cripple revenue?

It's one less day of business for restaurants in the host cities, one less night for hotels. And it's not just the attendance in these places. It's that these restaurants and hotels are charging premium prices in Indy during this week. And they know they can. It's one less night for sponsors to host "official" Super Bowl parties. One less day of advertisers buying premium time on your networks. Because it's not just the Super Bowl itself, it's all the programming building up to it.

I think I often said that my primary role at ESPN involved working on things that weren't in existence yet. Some of that includes mapping out different scenarios. We did this with all sports. What if the NBA season started two weeks later. What if we make the Indy 500 the first race of the season and move it to Monday. What if there was an extra round of MLB playoffs. What if the Super Bowl wasn't on Sunday. We mapped out many different scenarios yearly and in this case, the numbers wouldn't justify it.