Millionaire commercials, tickets worth almost ten thousand dollars, private jets queuing to find parking, an R&B legend like Usher on stage for half time.
The Super Bowl LVIII match (strictly in Roman numerals as per tradition) in Las Vegas between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers is sending bettors in the gambling mecca into a frenzy, but the reason for so much interest is not just in sport: Will Taylor Swift make it in time from Tokyo, where she sings with The Eras tour tonight?
The Japanese embassy in Washington reassured fans: 11 hours of flight and 17 hours of time difference will be enough to guarantee the presence of Time's Person of the Year in the VIP gallery to applaud the Kansas City team, where he plays as tight end the new boyfriend Travis Kelce.
For the very match - which is also a chance for revenge for the 49ers, the teams had clashed four years ago and the Chiefs had won - America will stop on Sunday evening.
The live broadcast on CBS - featuring quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes and Brock Purdy - will probably be the most watched television event of 2024 with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of commercials, including Martin Scorsese's Super Bowl debut, and then beer, cars, snacks and entertainment worth seven million every 30 seconds and a space, thanks to Swift, to the beauty sector: since the pop star began smooching his champion in September, the traditional audience of the National Football League has been enriched with daughters and girlfriends.
The Swift at the Super Bowl contributed to sparking controversy: starting with the private jet (one of the thousand that will clog the skies of Las Vegas between today and tomorrow, almost double the 562 that landed last year for the big game in Glendale, Arizona ) which in 2022 placed the singer's name at the top of the hit parade of the most polluting VIPs.
Taylor, precisely because of the jet, threatened to sue Jack Sweeney, the Florida student who follows his movements like those of other celebrities such as Elon Musk: "His safety is at stake", proclaimed the lawyers sending the formal notice.
Then there are those who have already objected to CBS: how many minutes will they dedicate to the singer while stealing them from the players on the pitch?
Not to mention politics: on the eve of the final, Donald Trump's people were outraged, fearing an unlikely support from the pop star for Joe Biden on the occasion of the Super Bowl.
Which the most romantics see as the occasion, instead, for Kelce to get the engagement ring.
Lots of irons in the fire therefore, enough to keep the public glued for three and a half hours in front of the TV, during which millions of pizzas, burgers, fried chicken and snacks will be consumed washed down with rivers of beer.
The king of R&B Usher will entertain the audience during the half-time with surprise guests: a 13-minute performance that will celebrate 30 years of career culminating in the just released album Coming Home, the ninth in the studio and the first in eight years.
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