It was as if the Gods of Ratings, Advertising Dollars and Social Media Buzz all decided to bestow their abundance on the National Football League at the same time.
For the past two American football seasons, they saw to it that Travis Kelce and his Kansas City Chiefs returned to the Super Bowl, allowing the beaming image of his megawatt girlfriend, pop star Taylor Swift, to be projected on the stadium Jumbotron, through the wilds of cyber space and on roughly 80 per cent of the TV screens across America.
The ratings were spectacular, even with hard-to-reach Gen Z audiences and young women. Rates for 30-second TV ads soared, and last year about 128mn viewers tuned in, according to Nielsen, making it both the largest audience ever for a Super Bowl and for a telecast on a single network in TV history.