Gearing up for Super Bowl XLVIII

Super Bowl XLVIII is here! Football fans around the country will be celebrating their favorite day of the year this coming weekend:  Super Bowl Sunday.  Whether you’re rooting for the Broncos, Seahawks, or more memorable interviews from Richard Sherman, here are some Super Bowl facts that you can recite to your friends in between slices of pizza (or cans of beer):

• The cost of a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl XLVIII is estimated to cost advertisers $4.0M.  That’s $133,333.00 per second.
• 9 out of the 10 most-watched programs in U.S. history are Super Bowls.  Super Bowl XLVI (Giants v. Patriots in 2012) tops the list with 111.3M viewers.  So what is only non-Super Bowl to land in the top 10?  The series finale of M-A-S-H.
• The Super Bowl is the 2^nd most watched sporting event in the world each year.  The Soccer Champions League Final is number 1.
• Only 5% of Super Bowl viewers watch the game alone and 1 out of every 12 people watch the game just for the commercials.
• The shortest Super Bowl commercial in history clocked in at .5 seconds.  Ivar’s seafood restaurant in Seattle, WA paid for the spot during the 2009 Super Bowl.
• Chrysler ran the longest Super Bowl commercial in history when then paid $12M in 2011 for a 120 second spot.
• Volkswagen’s “The Force” commercial during the 2011 Super Bowl was shared 5,570,000 times via social media.  Coincidentally, the Volkswagen Passat saw a 116% increase in sales shortly thereafter.
• Doritos’ “Goat 4 Sale” commercial was considered the most memorable ad from last year’s Super Bowl.
• There was a recorded 20.9 million Super Bowl-related tweets during last year’s Super Bowl – 3 in 10 were related to commercials.
• Thanks to Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl, the FCC now implements a 5-second delay on all live television.