Thursday, April 25, 2024

Super Bowl halftime options are aplenty

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Who watches football for the game any more? Sure, this is predicted to be one of the closest games in a long while (anything would look good compared to last years blowout), and apparently the oddsmakers in Vegas are predicting a 1-point win - screw that! Everyone knows the Super Bowl isn’t about football at all!

The Super Bowl is about the halftime show and the commercials. Did you know that last year alone people spent 6.3 million hours watching Super Bowl commercials on YouTube? That is the same as listening to Katy Perry’s “Roar” 84 million times. Which is also a rough approximation of the number of times it’s aired on your favorite radio station since it was released in September, 2013.

Perry initially announced that she turned down the Super Bowl gig during her “surprise” appearance on ESPN’s GameDay back in October (the one where she predicted a Michigan State win over Nebraska, and freaked out over corn dogs). In November, NBC and Perry confirmed that she actually would lead the Pepsi halftime show, to minimal excitement. Joining her will be Lenny Kravitz.

Perry also hinted that there could be more than just one collaboration over the course of her 12-minute performance, but the probability of Snoop Dogg (“California Gurls”) or Kanye West (“E.T.”) appearing are slim.

So what do you do when you don’t care about the halftime show? You re-watch the commercials from the first half on YouTube. YouTube knows this; the YouTube AdBlitz channel hosts all the Super Bowl advertisements, including sneak-peeks, behind-the-scene’s, and pre-releases of certain commercials as well.

What you’ll also find this year is YouTube’s first alternative halftime show, which will feature many prominent YouTube creators and musicians, including Harley Morenstein from EpicMealTime, Freddie Wong, Rhett & Link, and Toby Turner. Many creators have already uploaded videos to the channel, spoofing some of the most prominent ad tropes, kindly collected and recorded in “Harley’s Playbook: 21 Rules Every Successful Super Bowl Ad Must Follow.” Rule #17: Babies are adorable selling machines. Rule #20: Old folks doing young stuff will make you pee your pants.

If you finish the first half of Super Bowl XLIX and you refuse to listen to “Roar” for the 84,000,001th time, think about spending your halftime on YouTube, where you can re-watch your favorite commercials, see some awesome new content from your favorite online creators, and pause before you refill on 7-layer dip and beer.

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