Super Bowl Aftermath

Tom Brady accepting his Super Bowl MVP trophy


It's a Monday morning here in California, but a lot of people are still talking about the dramatic win of the New England Patriots over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI Sunday night in Houston.

Many news programs and even the sports debate shows are still featuring stories about the game, including the commercials and Lady Gaga's halftime performance.

Because of the Super Bowl, other sports events in America took the backseat, The NBA games were played early in the afternoon with Paul Pierce's last game for the LA Clippers at Boston Garden ending with his last-second three-pointer in a Clippers loss to the Celtics.

Even in the Philippines, the Super Bowl was still watched by a lot of people, thanks to the aggressive marketing of ABS-CBN Sports, which aired the game over its Sports+Action 23. Even Lady Gaga's halftime show was aired in its entirety.

Commercials-wise, the Philippine airing of the Super Bowl had only little ad placements such as Tanduay Rhum, LBC and in house pluggings of other S+A sports coverages unlike in the US airing where there were so many ads. Eventually, ABS-CBN aired the Clippers-Celtics game on a delayed basis at lunch time after the Patriots' victory.

Through Facebook, I talked to a former schoolmate of mine, Ken Ti, who works for ABS-CBN Sports. He told me that his network's airing of the Super Bowl is a baby step for it to eventually air more NFL regular season games next season.

ABS-CBN is dead-set on airing more NFL games to boost its profile especially with other sports like the NBA, UAAP, NCAA and ABL also being aired on S+A.

TV5, which aired three of the last four Super Bowls, passed up on airing the game this year because of its anime shows on weekday mornings targeted obviously for young kids who stay at home.

As I posted before, NFL football isn't followed by a lot of Filipinos because its rules are harder to understand compared to basketball. And it is obvious that basketball is a more popular sport back there.

Attempts have been made to bring NFL-style football closer to the Filipinos. I remember watching an NFL-style football game at the PhilSports football stadium in Pasig two years ago but only a handful of people were there to watch. Former RX DJ Karen Bordador, who is now in jail on drug charges, was one of the cheerleaders in that game,

Next year, the Super Bowl will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota with the Patriots heavily favored to win another title. But the other teams are expected to come up with major changes, most especially the teams that were eliminated from the playoffs.

The Denver Broncos, who won Super Bowl 50 last year, will surely bounce back while some teams, including the San Francisco 49ers, will have new head coaches and/or general managers.

Another team, the San Diego Chargers, will relocate to Los Angeles, giving LA two teams.

For Filipino NFL fans, ABS-CBN will surely try again to air the Super Bowl. TV5 had its chance this year but Chot Reyes may have been misguided by some of his people in his network who don't exactly know what identity it really has.










Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The NFL on Philippine TV

More Troubles at RX

NBASunDOS: Much Better than NBASabaDOS