How COVID-19 Affected the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is one of the most popular sporting events in America, if not the most popular.  Everyone knows when the Super Bowl is approaching, people start to plan Super Bowl parties.  Now with COVID-19 Super Bowl parties will not be the same.  With all the restrictions put into place, big parties are now frowned upon.  The Super Bowl game was still as exciting this year as any other.  

The Super Bowl this year did not have as many fans as before.  This year only 22,000 fans would be in attendance including 7,500 vaccinated workers and only 14,500 people who bought tickets.  This is a staggeringly low turnout for a Super Bowl, but the turnout had to be this low if all of the fans were going to be safe. During the game, the fans were spaced out and the stadium looked almost empty. If you would compare what a normal Super Bowl stadium would look like compared to the one from this past Super Bowl you would see a huge difference in attendance.  This may be the new normal for games now, having fans spread out from each other. The ticket prices for the game were cheaper than last year’s ticket prices.  The average ticket price for the Super Bowl this year was $6,200 while last year’s ticket prices were $6,621.  I would think that since there were fewer available tickets that the prices would increase, but for some reason, that was not the case.  

Although there are still many COVID-19 restrictions, Super Bowl parties still occurred.  Patrick Glibowski explained that “I had a Super Bowl party with my friends.”  Many people still had these parties because the Super Bowl is a game that is widely known for creating parties year after year.  If you have these parties with proper precautions, then there should not be a problem.  Molly Browning explained that “I just stayed home with my family to enjoy the Super Bowl.” There were many different ways people celebrate this Super Bowl.  Some had big parties like normal and some people followed the restrictions and stayed home with their families. The biggest Super Bowl party was the one the Buccaneers had.  At their Super Bowl party, many celebrities joined them including The Migos, Ludacris, and Mike Tyson.    

This Super Bowl may have been different because of COVID-19, but many interesting things happened in this Super Bowl.  The Buccaneers were the first team to win the Super Bowl in their home stadium.  This has never been done in any Super Bowl ever and is quite an accomplishment.  Another interesting thing that happened in this Super Bowl was that Sarah Thomas was the first woman to officiate in a Super bowl.  She was also the first woman to be a full-time official in the NFL. 

The Super Bowl was still exciting this year even though COVID precautions were still taken into consideration.  Parties were not as big as they normally would be, but the Super Bowl did show us that big games can still be fun without gathering together with people.