Poll: Readers as interested in Super Bowl commercials as in teams

If you paid $7 million for a 30-second Super Bowl commercial, take heart.

Readers of InMaricopa are nearly as interested in your product as they are in the combatants of Sunday’s big game.

That is reflected in this week’s InMaricopa readers’ poll results, in which we asked which team they are rooting for.

Maricopans backed the Kansas City Chiefs with 39.3% of the vote, nearly 5 percentage points ahead of the Philadelphia Eagles, with 34.5%.

But 26.2% of respondents selected a third choice, “I’m just watching it for the commercials.”

While the Super Bowl is the ultimate game in the most-popular sport in America, many fans are as interested in the unique, sometimes controversial and often hilarious commercials advertisers run on the most-watched television show of the year.

The Super Bowl drew 99.2 million viewers last year, according to Statista, up about 7 million from the previous year.

By comparison, in 2021 the four most-watched series were all NFL broadcasts: Sunday Night Football on NBC, Thursday Night Football simulcast on Fox and the NFL Network, Monday Night Football on ESPN, and Thursday Night Football on NFL Network. Yellowstone was fifth in viewership.

With numbers like that, it’s no wonder the networks can get $7 million for a Super Bowl ad.