Super Bowl XLVII -On The Ball
Live from Mexico · Disney Magic · The Big Game
The ElixirSuper Bowl at Sea
From transcendent fandom to a shipboard thought experiment about television rights, ownership, and the strange business of football.
Transcendent Fandom
The First Super Bowl
When I found out I was going to my first Super Bowl, I experienced a state of happiness usually reserved for transcendent Buddhist monks.
What could be bigger or better than that? Nothing.
Fast-forward to 1998: Super Bowl XXXII. Denver 31, Green Bay 24. It was my third Super Bowl, and I had to admit it played better as a must-see television event.
So I sold my tickets to a Cheesehead.
Disney Magic
The Big Game Without the Big Commercials
Today I was watching the Big Game from the Disney Cruise Ship Magic.
The international feed did not show the most anticipated power spots—the commercials.
The game traveled internationally. The advertising theatre did not.
Football Economics
Buy the Rights—or Buy the League?
That same year, the Vikings sold for $250 million. The original field note contrasted that figure with the $12.8 billion CBS, FOX, and ABC paid to broadcast NFL games through 2005.
The fortunes of the networks rise and fall on owning football broadcasting rights.
When the going gets weird, however, the weird do not turn pro. They start thinking.
You do not need a Ph.D. in economics to ask the strange question: why buy the rights when you might have bought the teams?
The original calculation suggested that the three networks could have bought all thirty NFL teams and gained the broadcast rights forever.
Pay for temporary broadcasting rights.
Replace recurring access costs with ownership.
The obvious transaction may not be the only transaction.
The Ownership Equation
Recurring Rights Cost + Better Framing = Ownership QuestionBook Connection
Karaoke Capitalism
This moment received an honorable mention in Jonas Ridderstråle and Kjell A. Nordström’s book Karaoke Capitalism.
The value of the idea was not whether anyone would literally buy the league. It was the habit of seeing a familiar market from an unfamiliar angle.
Brother Bob
BOBtized at Sea
The last time I watched a Super Bowl from a ship, my brother Bob was sailing with me.
He was booked as the NFL guest lecturer aboard the Crystal Serenity’s 2011 World Cruise.
Passengers were BOBtized as he handed out the sacrament of football—not soccer—to an international audience.
From enrichment speakers such as General Richard Myers, U.S. Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, and NFL insider Bob Reif to the cuisine of Nobu Matsuhisa, the source text presented Crystal Cruises as a floating university with very good food.
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Crystal at Sea
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