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Hi! My name is Pat Owens and this is the Poor Polylinguist number 4.
This Sunday is one of America?s biggest holidays: Super Bowl Sunday. If you?re not from North
America, you probably don?t know what that means.
The Super Bowl is the final match of the season for American Football, or in other words it?s
the championship game.
This year, the final teams are the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. The Patriots
are also known as the Pats, so I?m betting you can guess who I?m rooting for.
If you live in the US, the latter half of January is a constant bombardment of commercials
and news articles about the Super Bowl. One funny thing though is that in advertisements,
with the exception of official sponsors, they?ll almost never use the word ?super bowl? or
?super sunday? because the NFL has had trademarks on those words. Instead they use the words
?The Big Game? to refer to the Super Bowl, because the NFL wasn?t able to trademark that.
Chipotle, a popular burrito restaurant in the states and also the love of my life, found
a clever way around that though.
Anyways, the Super Bowl is the most watched event of the year in the US. Last year, 111
million people watched the Superbowl, which is more than 1 out of every 3 Americans.
Because of that, the commercials played during the Super Bowl are the most expensive commercials
in the world. In fact, this year, it will cost 4 million
dollars to show just a 30-second commercial. Lucky for us, this also means that the Super
Bowl has some of the best commercials in the world.
So, today, I?m going to send you three links: The first is what was voted as the ?best?
commercial from last year.
The second is the most expensive ad in the history of the super bowl, which cost about
12 million dollars.
And the third is a collection of some of the funniest commercials of 2010.
I used to show these to my students to help them kind of understand Super Bowl mania.
If you come back, maybe you can share some of your favorite commercials in the comments
below. Maybe commercials from your country or commercials that you like.
Next week, I?ll pick a few of my favorite videos from this year?s Super Bowl, also.
I guess I?ll see you next week!