Going into this exchange year I knew that at some point I would be watching the Superbowl, or at least the ads during it. From the beginning everyone hyped me up regarding the Superbowl and the amount of people that were supposedly watching it. I was told super big companies would air their new ads on Superbowl Sunday and it did not disappoint!

I spent my Superbowl Sunday at a friend’s house with other exchange students, two other German and a Spanish exchange student, and we reacted to this whole American tradition together.  We had tons of good food and watched the game together, which, in my opinion, was pretty solid.

I did want to see the 49ers though, but The Chiefs and the Eagles managed to put up a really suspenseful and good game to watch. Then again, it’s the first Superbowl I’ve ever watched. The halftime show was pretty cool, regarding how they literally built a whole flying stage on top of the football field in a matter of minutes. I’m not a huge Rihanna fan, so to me the whole show was cool to watch but overall the halftime show was kind of overhyped to me. 

To me it’s kind of funny how the Superbowl is such a big deal here, when there’s barely anyone outside of the US that watches it, but here it’s like this huge event that people look forward to, kind of like we do to the Europe cup or the world cup, which in return barely gets any recognition here.

It’s funny how football is cemented as the main sport here, when it is soccer anywhere else in the world. Literally, the only time all of your friends are just glued to the TV or their phones is during the two Cups we have. Your whole family sits down in front of the TV, the whole city is alive and when your team (I remember this from 2014 when Germany won the world cup) scores you can hear your neighbors cheering, which sometimes spoils you the goal if your connection is bad and your TV lags behind a few seconds.

I have to admit the emotions are way bigger during a soccer game than during a football game, something I was kind of disappointed by. With that I mean, when a team scores a touchdown you do cheer, and the suspense of a field-goal attempt is great, but it doesn’t compare to when a goal or a free kick is scored. The emotions just run wilder, and because it is relatively rare to score in soccer it feels like a greater deal, I mean the 2014 final was won in overtime with a score of 1:0. Just one goal was scored the whole game, which makes it that much more important. Imagine a Superbowl game went out 0:3, with no touchdowns scored. No one would watch it and the game would be boring to watch.

The tradition around the ads and the level of production in those ads, referencing the breaking bad ad, is really fun to watch though. Its funny how I saw many people only watch it for the ads, not even the game itself.

In conclusion though, I will watch it again next year, from Germany, and I hope the ads are as funny as the breaking bad ad, or as stupid as the remote ad.