GRF Shiv, on Super Bowl Sunday held an even where he essentially was showing us how to gamble. He printed out packets from a gambling website in which we had answer questions that were predictions of the game. However, just like most gambling you have to make an investment online. After, if you make a prediction and someone else were to make the same, and both of you were correct then you would split the profit of the people who were wrong. For example, on the packet it seemed like that New England Patriots were the favorite to win, and the Philadelphia Eagles were the underdogs. After the Super bowl, the Eagles won with a score of 41-33. Unfortunately for those that made  abet on the Patriots, it seems like they would have lost some there investment to the people who placed a bet on the Eagles get to split it. I think when I have more time, I will look more in this phenomenon because there are people that have learned about the algorithms have been able to gain profit from it.

Because the Super Bowl is the most popular sports program in the United States, the Super Bowl’s advertising costs are also the most expensive. This year’s 30-second advertisement is around 3.5 million US dollars. Advertising costs are so high that natural advertisers also use 18 martial arts to make advertisements as good as possible and attract attention. Therefore, everyone thinks that the Super Bowl advertising itself is also a super bowl of TV advertising, and creativity and production are first class. Everyone usually ignores advertisements and even avoids them, but they have expectations for advertisements on the Super Bowl. On the next day’s newspaper and website, apart from commenting on the previous day’s competition, there will be comments and rankings on the advertisement.

First, I’d like to give a shoutout to Shiv for making the event so comfortable and casual. The entire environment was not intimidating at all and it was easy for me to communicate with my fellow rose scholars. Above all, the event was interesting! Instead of lecturing us, Shiv really cared about our own wanting to enjoy the super bowl and learn whatever we wanted. His packet of information about gambling and the marketing schemes behind the Super Bowl were really interesting; me and him even talked about the odds for the game. By the end of the event, he had converted me to a Giants fan!

I was never a die hard football fan, but I do enjoy watching and knew the fundamental rules and strategies of the sport. What I didn’t know is how much the sport had diverged from its athletic roots and become a market ploy when it comes to the Super Bowl. Of course, the game at the end of the day is about which team won or lost, but what about all of the team sponsors? Who makes the members perform so well? Money. Companies give hefty amounts of money to put their logo on just a small corner of a quarterback’s uniform. The commercials that play in between the Super Bowl have been thought about for months, probably even years. Football is not alone when it comes to the marketing world, as all other sports have their share in being “sold out” to big businesses. This event was really eye opening!

Before watching the 52nd Super Bowl on sunday night, we learned a bit about the history of the Super Bowl and the other aspects of it besides the actual sport. Prior to this event, I hadn’t realized how much business, marketing, and money is involved in the Super Bowl. Of course, being a national sporting event, I knew it was a great opportunity for different companies to make money, but I had no idea viewers were also making a good amount of money as well. The GRF Shiv introduced us to different components surrounding the Super Bowl such as the different prop bets people place, the advertisements that are aired during the superbowl, and just about football in general. I found the prop bets the most interesting. They serve as an opportunity for viewers to invest in the game. There are a variety of bets people take part in from individual team performances to overall performances, to bets that have nothing to do with football! For instance, one of the prop bets this year that caught my eye was whether Justin Timberlake would sing a Prince cover. In my opinion, I think it would be fun for someone like me, who isn’t particularly interested in football, to participate in these bets. I was also fascinated by the amount of business the food industry receives on Super Bowl Sunday. Americans buy an average of 12.5 million pizzas on Super Bowl Sunday! Participating in this Super Bowl Sunday event opened my eyes to the other industries’ roles that are involved in a football game. The Super Bowl is not just a sports game. Although I wasn’t rooting for any team, it was still fun to watch as my friends place bets and anxiously root for their teams.

I’m an avid football fan. Raised in New England, I’ve been religiously following the Patriots for over decade. Although I may not have learned much “football trivia” at this past Sunday’s Super Bowl event, I actually learned a surprising amount about the vast world of gambling that surrounds football games, and especially the Super Bowl. The GRF hosting the event, Shiv, gave us an introduction on the basics of proposition bets. These bets are essentially wagers that aren’t directly decided by the final outcome of the game. Most commonly, prop betting is focused around factors such as individual or team performances, and prop betting has been around for a very long time — dating back to at least the 1870’s if not earlier. I was intrigued by this, and the Rose event inspired me to a little deeper into prop bets.

One thing I learned is that, as a general rule, sportsbooks tend to fare very well on prop betting. Why? Well, prop betting is vastly driven by public interest and perception. Especially during the Super Bowl, bettors set prop bets for fun in hopes of getting lucky with a payout, often without putting excruciating thought into such wagers. For this reason, sports prop betting is thought to actually be a profitable sector of gambling for “smart” bettors. For example, player-based prop bets are a prime example of what may be a profitable sector for individuals who specialize in football stats — such as fantasy football gurus. Often times, as sportsbooks have so many lines to set, they will base player bets simply on average stats. Close football enthusiasts, however, may realize the “intangibles” that a line may not account for, and use this to their advantage. Essentially, bettors have an edge over sportsbooks in the sense that they can dig deeper and do their research. Regular bettors often search through varying betting platforms to seek discrepancies that one casino may have that can be taken advantage of.

To summarize — the Rose event was a unique experience, informing and intriguing me on a topic I had little knowledge of!

This past week I watched the Super Bowl, and felt a little odd as opposed to years past. Back home people are big football fans: even if you don’t play, its not really an option to not watch the Super Bowl. But here at Cornell there are a lot more people who aren’t familiar with American football or just aren’t into it, and even though I don’t consider myself a big football person I found myself being *more* knowledgable than some of my friends who were watching with me.

The advertising is always a popular topic with the Super Bowl, but this year something caught my eye that I have never really paid too much attention to, which was the prevalence of military symbolism and veterans at the game. At the coin toss this year 15 Medal of Honor recipients were honored (https://chicago.suntimes.com/sports/super-bowl-nfl-honor-military-veterans-medal-honor/) and several military planes flew overhead. This strikes me as all the more odd in light of the recent kerfuffle about black players protesting racism by kneeling during the national anthem. Many opponents of these protests said that a football game is not the place for politics, and yet displays like this are clearly a political statement. Tacit endorsement of the U.S military and its activities is not an uncontroversial opinion in 2018. This also makes me wonder how common such a display is; whether other countries regularly have these clear endorsements of the military during privately run events like sports games.

This is an excellent article that analyzes the close ties between the military and sports in the US (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-astore/the-militarization-of-sports_b_912004.html)

Last weekend, I was lucky to watch super bowl and know about it background knowledge with GRF Shiv and Professor Blalock. As someone who has never knew about football or other popular US sports before, I felt a little awkward at first when looking at the question sheet and watching everyone else was so excited. Thanks to Shiv and Professor Blalock, I knew about the rules of the game from scratch. However, after talking more with Professor Blalock, I realize that what is interesting is not the game itself, but the culture and controversial issues behind it: For example, many children from relatively poor family are sent to the football sports team because their parents regard this as a way to make quick and big money, even if the sports may cause serious brain knocking; US people regard super bowl as a world game, which in fact in the world nearly only Americans love football(others may prefer baseball etc). I was deeply impressed by the atmosphere in dining hall that day, and the issues behind the game.

This is a great opportunity for me to know more about US culture and step further about this culture other than academics. I hope that in future I can have more this kind of opportunities.

I don’t know the rules of football. I’ve never watched a game in full. I can’t name more than five NFL teams. As a result, Shiv’s talk on the Super Bowl was extremely enlightening. I hadn’t realized that the Patriots and Tom Brady were such a dominant force in the NFL, and that the media had created an “underdog” narrative around the Eagles’ success this season.

I’ve always heard of the incredible marketing value and absurd prices of Super Bowl commercials. What was new to me was how the marketing techniques employed during the Superbowl have changed in recent years. During the pre-show spots, one ad asked viewers to tag their home videos on twitter so they could be used in another spot during the game. Later, in one of the most shocking advertising stunts of the year, Netflix released the first trailer for its exclusive film, The Cloverfield Paradox, and announced that the entire film would be released hours later, immediately following the game. The way that we consume media has changed, and the biggest marketing event of the year has adapted to take advantage of this.

Anothing thing that surprised me the extent of the gambling related to the Super Bowl. That people place bets on who would win is to be expected, but for the Super Bowl people can place bets on even the most minor of details, such as the color of the winner’s gatorade and how much Donald Trump will tweet.

During the trivia session about the Super Bowl, I encountered an interesting question “Why do Eagles fans wear dog masks?” Since I had not been following any of the previous matches, this took me by surprise. On further research, I found a Washington Post about the masks. It turns out that the masks were a reference to the Eagles’ position as an underdog in the competition. This was so widespread; that the original retailer ran out of German Shepard masks, 230 of them, overnight. This is an example of ‘sports totems’, symbols that act as markers of identity. This could be from something as symbol as painting your face in the colours of your team, to something specified like the dog masks.

While the dog masks were used to express a certain thought, these identifiers can sometimes be arbitrary. The article also discussed a few other ‘sports totems’. One example of this is the rally monkey, a symbol for the Los Angeles Angels that originated during a home game against the Giants. In 2000, the board operators played a clip of the monkey from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, to great success. When the Angels were down in the ninth innings, they played the clip again with the words “Rally Monkey” superimposed on the clip. The game ended with a win for the Angels, making the rally monkey an enduring symbol for the team.

Other examples include the ‘Rat Trick’, where Florida Panthers fans throw plastic rats onto the ice before a hockey match. This tradition originated in 1996, and has been repeated a few times after. Another example is the Boston Red Sox theme song, “Sweet Caroline”. Overall, it was interesting to find out about sports traditions. It will be interesting to see whether the Eagles fans continue to wear dog masks for the next football season; can they be called underdogs anymore?

I spent last Sunday keeping my fingers crossed that the Patriots would pull off some miracle play(s) and win yet another Super Bowl. I usually root for the underdogs, in this case Philadelphia, but given that a couple recent Patriots championship wins have been unexpected to say the least, I wanted to see how far their luck would take them. There is a lot involved in the Super Bowl, from the torrent of meticulously crafted commercials, to the highly devoted fans. And, zooming out from the Minneapolis Stadium in which the game was played, I could see in the Rose dining hall an assortment of people. Some were heavily invested, while a few others seemed to spend more of their time looking at their phone screen than at the game. But that seems to be the power of the Super Bowl: crowding a bunch of people together, even if for different reasons. In the end, I’m glad Philly finally got the Lombardi Trophy. Even if you don’t particularly like football, there’s a good chance that living in Philadelphia will be a lot more enjoyable for at least a week due to boosted morale. And as for Boston, Tom Brady is likely immortal, so it’s probably just a matter of time before they take the trophy back. As with last year, I’m glad I attended the event. I thought both teams played pretty well, but with the dawn of each football season, I will always be raising my own, mental foam finger held high for the Arizona Cardinals.

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I start the day with four lectures.  On Monday, February  5th each one of my professors began by jokingly discussing the superbowl.  For example, “Do I have any sore Patriot fans on the splendiferous morning?”  From this I gathered who the winner of super bowl 52 was.

The night before, I imagine I looked extremely invested in the game.  Really, I was just swept up in the glamour and culture surrounding American football.  Skinny girls in tiny shiny outfits, a popular rap or techno song, and bright lights welcome the teams onto the field.  Their bouncy jogs were like something from a sexy beach add and on that note someone next to me commented on unhealthy masculinity upheld by the NFL.

The Super Bowl is a world of it’s own.  They attract viewers of all cultures, ages, genders, and interest.  Among the viewers exists gamblers, sport finatics, music lovers and commercial appreciators.  I treat this all American holiday much how a little kid picks over a fancy finger sandwich.  I enjoying the anthems and results, the commercials, the halftime shows but as hard as I try, I never enjoy the football game.

This week I went to the Super Bowl event.

It’s interesting how the Super Bowl seems like the only American television broadcast where commercials are appreciated. Usually, commercials are a necessary evil getting in the way of what you actually want to see, but necessary for funding purposes. But during the Super Bowl this isn’t the case usually. The commercials are very much a part of the entertainment. My first thought here is that the Super Bowl attracts a diverse crowd of viewers including many non-football fans.So the commercials provide a reason for people to stay and watch the whole game. The other thing to keep in mind is that a 30 second ad costs ~$7 million so it makes sense for the advertising companies to put extra care into making the highest quality ads possible, especially knowing that they’re paying a lot and that half America will be watching.

The thing I was most anticipating though was the teaser trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story. Really it was a trailer for trailer – the full length preview is set to be released tomorrow. Disney’s marketing is really quite brilliant – it’s almost like meta-advertising. Just off the teaser, I’m looking forward to it. I’m interested to see what the speeder chase is about (I bet that’ll be the opening scene of the film) and another thing people don’t seem to be talking about: the double moon/sun at 0:22/0:23. The latter scene is interesting because it could be evidence of where Solo travels with the Millennium Falcon in the film. After all, we’ve scene the binary suns on Tatooine and the double moons (less obviously) on Canto Bight.

I’ve never been a football fan/football watcher myself, mainly because I didn’t really understand what people were doing when they’re playing football (I kind of get the gist of the game, but I never really know where I’m supposed to look when people are playing and I am generally confused about 90% of the football game), but I do know there is a lot of hype surrounding the SuperBowl, and I know that a lot of people are actually more interested in the commercials themselves than the SuperBowl.

So, while I cannot say much about the game itself, I do find the marketing aspect of it interesting. Last year, about 114 million people watched the SuperBowl (more than a third of the U.S. population), and apparently a 30-second ad would cost around five million dollars. That’s worth it (?) though–that’s only 4 cents per view, and in the social media age, the effect of ads can be maximized with social media exposure. If the advertisers do something novel, tell a story, show something memorable, and then come up with some sort of catchy hashtag, then potential customers/SuperBowl viewers are more likely to react to it, leading to awareness of the brand’s products and services, and of course, brand recall.

In researching online about the SuperBowl commercials, I found a few interesting facts:

• Some brands might not be able to make back the money they spent on a SuperBowl commercial, since it is now so expensive (and the 5 million price tag for a 30 second ad doesn’t even take into account the cost of actually producing the ad!)
• A number of advertisers have started to post part of their ads (or the full thing!) on social media (such as Youtube) before the game–probably to double up on the exposure by coupling the ad with social media
• Because of how expensive SuperBowl ads are, brands such as Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and GM decided to skip a few of the recent SuperBowls
• Interestingly, this year will be the first time since 1992 that SuperBowl and the Winter Olympics are broadcasted on the same network. In comparison, though, in 2010, a 30-second Winter Olympic advertisement sold for ~94.3 thousand dollars.

I feel like from those couple facts, it’s clear that the SuperBowl commercials are pretty special and even significant to American culture/economics. It’s really interesting to me that people would be interested in the ads (after all that’s all I want to skip when I’m watching a show on TV!) but also I feel like SuperBowl commercials aren’t really your typical commercials. In terms of the cinematography and content, SuperBowl ads are usually more polished, and some have emotional, heartstring tugging content, and some companies make political statements.

While I’m not planning on watching the game this year, I’ll probably be looking at some of the blogs posting reviews on the SuperBowl Commercials, or this NY Times article on the commercial live coverage.