🏈 The Economics of the Super Bowl

In today’s newsletter I discuss the economics of the Super Bowl, SpaceX just acquired Elon Musk’s xAI, SpaceX wants to launch 1 million orbital AI data center satellites, Tesla is going to stop making cars at their Fremont, California factory to instead begin making their Optimus robots which will go on sale in 2027, Chinese organized crime networks moved an estimated $16 billion dollars in crypto in 2025 so that’s not good for the image of crypto, Lindsey Vonn crashed into a safety fence just 2 weeks before she’s scheduled to compete in her last Olympics, the 2026 Winter Olympics officially start with the Opening Ceremonies on Friday, Feb. 6, and that jerk Punxsutawney Phil just saw his shadow so we’re in for 6 more weeks of Winter

Let’s get into it!

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🏈 The Economics of the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is more than just a championship game. It is a massive financial engine that hums with the energy of billion dollar industries, and the attention of a global audience of 212.4 million viewers across 197 countries and territories during last year’s Super Bowl. Every year those numbers climb even higher as the Super Bowl continues to transform from just another sports broadcast into a cultural and economic phenomenon. The Super Bowl represents a unique moment where the world of professional athletics meets the absolute peak of consumer capitalism, with a little bit of entertainment thrown in for good measure.

The scale of the money involved in the Super Bowl tells a story of a nation that is willing to invest billions of dollars into a single football game that lasts only 4 hours from kickoff to the final whistle. This year Super Bowl LX, or Super Bowl 60 for those of us that don’t know how to read Roman numerals, will be played this year at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, and will feature a matchup between the 14-3 New England Patriots facing off against the also 14-3 Seattle Seahawks, also known as my son’s favorite football team. The Bay Area Host Committee projects the economic impact for the San Francisco Bay area will be between $370-$630 million dollars. While the Super Bowl will take place at Levi's Stadium, it will be broadcast live on NBC and streamed online via their Peacock app. For the 2026 Super Bowl the NFL is anticipating a record breaking viewership of 213.1 million viewers worldwide.

This is the New England Patriots’ twelfth Super Bowl appearance, which is the most of any team in the NFL, and their first appearance since quarterback Tom Brady left the team in 2020. A win would give the New England Patriots a seventh Lombardi Trophy, giving them one more than the Pittsburgh Steelers for the most Super Bowl championships in history of the NFL. The Seattle Seahawks, who are the odds on favored team to win the Super Bowl, are making their fourth appearance, and they are looking for their second Lombardi Trophy.

The financial scale of this event is evident by the $10 million dollar cost of a 30 second commercial. This is a record breaking amount that shows how valuable the airtime during the Super Bowl has become for the biggest brands in the world. Advertisers are shelling out millions of dollars to produce these ads, and often pay top dollar for celebrity spokespeople like Peyton Manning and Sabrina Carpenter. Total consumer spending across the United States for food, drinks, and apparel related to the Super Bowl is expected to reach a record $20.2 billion dollars in 2026. This comes out to about $94.77 dollars per person.

Yup, that sounds about right for my family.

Last year’s 2025 Super Bowl generated a record breaking $800 million dollars in advertising revenue, which is up from the estimated $650-$700 million dollars in advertising revenue brought in by the 2024 Super Bowl. Many advertisers are aiming for humor this year to try and keep things light, amidst concerns about the economy and the splintered political divide in this country. NBC’s broadcast will feature a host of returning advertisers like Budweiser and Pepsi, as well as new entrants including the health care company Ro and the betting site Fanatics Sportsbook. Approximately 40 percent of the advertisers in 2026 are new to advertising during the Super Bowl.

This year the average price for a ticket to the Super Bowl is around $7,865 dollars, but you can still find some entry level seats on the secondary markets like StubHub that are going for between $4,500-$5,100 dollars a ticket, while over on Ticketmaster’s site they have tickets listed for as high as $57,330 dollars for VIP seating on the 40 yard line.

This year players on the winning team of the Super Bowl will each earn a bonus of $178,000 dollars, while players on the losing team will still get a paycheck for $103,000 dollars. Nice paying job for just showing up. They also get a Super Bowl ring that is made of yellow or rose gold, it’s encrusted with diamonds, has their team’s name and logo, and the phrase “World Champion”. Each ring can also be customized with the name and uniform number of each player. The final price of a Super Bowl ring usually comes in between $30,000-$50,000 dollars per ring.

And since this is the biggest sporting event of the year, we can’t forget to mention the economic impact of the legal sports betting industry, which is projected to reach $1.7 billion dollars in wagers nationwide this year, and will also include prediction market newcomers like Polymarket and Kalshi. Approximately 75 million Americans are expected to place some form of wager on the Super Bowl, with the scale of gambling showing how deeply the Super Bowl has become ingrained within the betting industry.

Performing at this year’s Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show is the controversial, to some, Latin American superstar Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio - better known to the music world as Bad Bunny. This is a big deal for the Super Bowl, and also for global entertainment economics. Performing at the big game solidifies Bad Bunny as one of the hottest performers worldwide, and exposes the NFL to a demographic that has increasing spending power. The Latin American music industry is a massive and rapidly expanding market, where revenues grew by a remarkable 22.5% in the last year alone. It’s no wonder that Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, in partnership with the NFL and Apple Music, jumped at the opportunity to sign Bad Bunny to the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show.

Bad Bunny is one of the most commercially dominant artists in the world, with his success largely driven by streaming and his seemingly never ending touring. Bad Bunny has amassed over 115.8 million records sold worldwide, and his songs have accumulated close to 100 billion total streams on platforms like Spotify and YouTube. His massive tours have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue worldwide.

Want some examples? I’m glad you asked.

Bad Bunny’s 2024 “Most Wanted Tour” grossed approximately $210.9 million dollars. Before that in 2022, Bad Bunny’s “El Último Tour Del Mundo” and his “World's Hottest Tour” combined set an industry record for the highest grossing tours in a calendar year by pulling in over $435 million dollars.

With a net worth of around $100 million dollars, you’d expect Bad Bunny would be getting paid big money to perform at the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show, right? Well, you’d be wrong. Artists don’t get paid to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. It’s that big of an honor, but their dancers do. Who foots the bill for all that dancing? The artists themselves. The Super Bowl Halftime Show is such an oddity in the world of entertainment! The logic goes that artists are selected to perform at the Halftime show when they have reached the pinnacle of their career, and are usually financially set for life. In addition to paying their dancers, they also usually contribute to the cost of their show to cover whatever the NFL’s production costs don’t cover in order to achieve their dream performance. It also doesn’t hurt that following a Super Bowl Halftime Show performance the artist usually sees a big boost to the global brand with increased album sales and streaming, as well as a new tour which most artists kick off after the show.

This year’s production of the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show is being directed by Hamish Hamilton and produced by Jesse Collins, alongside Roc Nation’s CEO and co-founder Desiree Perez. The pregame musical performances this year include Charlie Puth singing the national anthem, and Brandi Carlile performing “America the Beautiful”, as well as Coco Jones singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.

The Super Bowl has grown into such a massive global phenomenon that defines the intersection of sports and economic power. With ads selling for a record-breaking $10 million dollars per 30 second ad, and an estimated $20.2 billion dollars in total consumer spending for this single football game, the Super Bowl has become the ultimate stage for capitalism. As millions of viewers worldwide watch the New England Patriots face off against the Seattle Seahawks, and millions of Gen Z and Millennials tune in just to watch Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show, the financial impact of the Super Bowl continues to remain unmatched in the world of sports and economics.

Quick Hits

🤑 Business

SpaceX has announced that they are acquiring Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI, which itself merged with his social media company X (forever to be called Twitter by me) back in 2025. This deal values SpaceX at $1 trillion dollars and xAI at $250 billion dollars, for a combined market cap of $1.25 trillion dollars - the largest merger in the world.

This all comes as rumors have swirled about this possible acquisition, and a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla, all ahead of SpaceX’s planned IPO coming in in June 2026. 

Add to all of this, xAI was just announced last week that Tesla has invested $2 billion dollars in xAI during a $20 billion funding round that also included investors Nvidia, Cisco, Fidelity, Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi’s MGX and Baron Capital Group.

This has me excited, because as a long term Tesla shareholder that means I own equity in Elon Musk’s xAI, which was just acquired by SpaceX, so I’m now also a shareholder in SpaceX! This is like a dream come true for an investor and space geek like me!

🦫 Entertainment

Punxsutawney Phil just saw his shadow, so they’re saying we’re in for 6 more weeks of winter. Reporting from Upstate New York, where we’re 3 weeks into having -10 F temperatures at night, I could have told you Winter is nowhere near close to being over.

That groundhog is smart to go back to sleep. Do me a favor and wake me up when it gets warm again!

🚀 Space

Elon Musk’s SpaceX just filed an application with the FCC to launch 1 million orbital AI data center satellites. This will significantly expand beyond SpaceX’s current network of 9600 Starlink satellites, which cost SpaceX an estimated $10 billion dollars to design, build, launch, operate, and provide space-based Internet services to their 9 million active subscribers worldwide in over 155 countries, territories, and markets.

SpaceX’s new data center satellites will use solar panels to gather continuous energy from the sun, while relying on the freezing temperatures of the vacuum of space to cool all those AI computer chips, resulting in what Elon Musk believes will be a massive cost savings over the cost of operating AI data centers here on Earth.

Here’s to hoping those cost savings are out of this world. (sorry, I couldn’t help myself!)

🤖 Robots

The robot revolution is about to begin, and Elon Musk’s Tesla announced they will be ending the production of Models S and X vehicles at their Fremont, California factory in order to begin making Optimus robots. Elon Musk has said Tesla will begin selling Optimus robots by the end of 2027. But take that date with a grain of salt; Elon Musk is known to be a little bit optimistic shall we say about when things will happen, so my guess is we still have a few more years to binge all the Terminator and Matrix movies as we prepare to fight back against the machines.

🐷 Crypto

In another blow to the image of cryptocurrency, it’s been reported by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis that Chinese organized crime networks moved an estimated $16 billion dollars in crypto in 2025. 

This comes as China has tightened their domestic enforcement of cryptocurrency networks, so these organized crime networks have migrated to countries in Southeast Asia like Cambodia and Myanmar, where they often operate out of specialized "scam compounds" where they run cons like "pig butchering" scams, which is a sophisticated, long-term form of investment fraud in which perpetrators cultivate fake romantic relationships with victims before persuading them to send money, often in the form of cryptocurrency. The term comes from the analogy where scammers "fatten up" their victims with attention and compliments before they move in for the "slaughter" where they take all their money.

Now that doesn’t sound very romantic.

⛷️ Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Vonn crashed into a safety fence on Friday, January 30, 2026 in Crans Montana, Switzerland. The accident occurred during her final scheduled competition before the start of the 2026 Winter Olympics. Luckily she was able to get up and walk with a slight limp on her injured knee before being airlifted via helicopter from the slopes for a trip to the hospital to get checked out.

Her journey back to the Olympics at age 41 has been filled with months of intense training, and seeing her injured just days before the start of the games is a heavy blow for her and all her fans worldwide. Lindsey Vonn started skiing at age 3 with her father and grandfather, and has won 84 World Cup race victories, and 3 Olympic medals (including 1 Gold and 2 Bronzes) during her career.

In a statement to reporters she said her “Olympic dream is not over” after crashing, and with 2 weeks before her scheduled Super-G downhill race on February 8 she’s hopeful that her doctors will give her the all clear to compete in what will most likely be her last Olympics.

🏅 Sports

The 2026 Winter Olympics officially start on Friday, Feb. 6, with the opening ceremonies live from Milan, Italy, but some of the competitions are actually getting a head start beginning this Wednesday like the edge-of-your-seat Curling mixed doubles.

The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina are expected to cost over $6.17 billion dollars, and aren’t without controversy. Some of the venues, like the brand new ice hockey arena in Milan, Italy, won’t be finished in time for the first match of the games. So I guess they’ll be using rollerblades instead?

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.