#Answer: Strangers Aren’t So Bad After All
The Super Bowl has ended. The jerseys have been hung back in the closet to collect dust for another 8 months. Interest in advertisements has returned to its normal level, the Budweiser Clydesdales put in their stables for another year. Grease-stained shirts have been sent to the cleaners, and the thoughts of sports fans across the United States have shifted to hockey, basketball, and baseball.
Unlike the World Series, the Stanley Cup, and the NBA Championship, the Super Bowl is a singular event: it’s a “do-or-die” game in which a poor performance can turn a winning season (or, in the Patriots’ case, an undefeated regular season) into a dud. Much like the World Cup finals, it matters not how you’ve played up to that point but rather how you play in those final 60 minutes. It’s an ultimatum, which is part of the reason it’s so eagerly anticipated. Force people to sit through a four-game series over 6 days, and their interest may wane; condense all of that into one game, and you capture this passion at its zenith.
After 50 years, the Super Bowl is, for all intents and purposes, a major American holiday, a nacho-filled tradition in which people who don’t typically follow sports will happily sit through a 5-hour game. The reason? The Super Bowl is not merely about sports; it’s about $5 million advertisements, flashy halftime concerts, confetti, fireworks, food, drinks, friends, and, for those at the stadium, “crowd camaraderie.”
That latter part, “crowd camaraderie,” is especially noteworthy, as it explains the inability of technology to quell demand for tickets to sporting events. Virtual reality can easily create an augmented reality that drops you into the first row of a stadium, but it can never replicate the feeling of “being there.” Indeed, everyone with a headset will ultimately have access to the noises and the visuals of the stadium; but “being there” includes so much else. It comprises the opportunity to high-five a stranger after a touchdown; it comprises the opportunity to walk to a snack bar (albeit an overpriced one) for a hot pretzel; it comprises the feeling of numbness that comes from sitting in a rock-hard stadium seats; and, as Pat Brady so eloquently explains, it comprises the sensation that comes with knowing you’re there while millions of other people aren’t. Fans jump at the chance to be together, either in mutual celebration of a silver-clad trophy or in mutual sadness of a season gone to waste.
It’s a bit of paradox: discomfort can be more valuable than comfort. People want the expensive hot dogs; they enjoy the painful stadium seats; and they relish sitting amidst 70,000 strangers. If virtual reality, or any form of technology for that matter, could lessen the demand for Super Bowl tickets, it would have already done so. Yet even with 3-D televisions, premium cable packages, and happy hour promotions, millions still vie for a ticket to the game. Place your bets against that ending anytime soon.
