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The Super Bowl is the pinnacle of football season in the United States. The final championship game played between the champions of the National Football Conference (NFC) and American Football Conference (AFC), decides the ultimate winners of each football season. The Super Bowl is also the most-watched television event of the year across the country and is often watched even by people who don’t consider themselves football fans.
People hold parties, go out, spend time with their friends, check out their LiveSport.Center, make bets, play games - it’s a well-established part of American pop culture.
Advertisers love it, too; advertisements played during the Super Bowl reach tens of millions and many companies now create special ad ‘events’. Sometimes these ads can be an audience draw in themselves! However, they don’t come cheap – ad spots for the Super Bowl cost a serious amount of money.
With such a huge audience and established presence in every American’s calendar, it’s no surprise that the Super Bowl halftime show has become such a phenomenon. Halftime shows are part of the culture of American football at every level. With a guaranteed audience in the tens of millions, it’s a gig every performer in the country wants to book. These days the show is a massive spectacle, performed by the biggest names in music – but that hasn’t always been the case.
Similar ensembles performed the first Super Bowl halftime shows as those found in school and other halftime shows; marching bands, drill teams, and university musical groups. In fact, the group that holds the record for the most Super Bowl halftime show appearances is the Grambling State University Marching Band, which has performed in six different shows. These earlier halftime shows were based around a specific theme.
The first Super Bowl halftime show to feature a famous musical group of the day was Super Bowl XXV, in 1991. The 25th anniversary of the event was celebrated with a performance by New Kids on the Block, a cast of Disney characters, and local school children. It was also sponsored – by Disney and Coca-Cola.
Since then Gloria Estefan, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, N-SYNC, Britney Spears, Paul McCartney, and The Rolling Stones have all featured in Super Bowl halftime performances. Pop performers briefly fell out of favor in the early 2000s after the infamous moment where Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s chest during their performance. Classic rock bands were given the gig for a few years until 2011 when the Black Eyed Peas teamed up with Usher.
The 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, which featured Lady Gaga, was not just the most-viewed television event of that year, but the most-watched television event of all time – with 150million viewers. However, it is not the most-viewed network broadcast (many viewers came from online streams and so on).
The honor of the most-watched halftime show goes to the 2014 halftime show performed by Katy Perry, Missy Elliot, and Lenny Kravitz and featuring an infamous performance by a dancing shark!
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