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Super Bowl LIII - Athletics, Advertisements, and An Experiment

Accepted submission by martyb at 2019-02-03 19:11:54 from the join the fun dept.
/dev/random

Athletics: Though it may not rank as high in viewership as World Cup Soccer (Football to the rest of the world), the 53rd Super Bowl [wikipedia.org] is tonight and historically sports (heh!) the largest viewership in the US of any other television broadcast. The game is being held at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia [mercedesbenzstadium.com] and features the 2-point favorite American Football Conference (AFC) [wikipedia.org] champion New England Patriots [wikipedia.org] vying with the National Football Conference (NFC) [wikipedia.org] champion Los Angeles Rams [wikipedia.org] to be crowned the champions of the National Football League (NFL) [wikipedia.org] for the 2018 season.

The game is scheduled to start at 6:30pm EST (2330 UTC) and is being broadcast in the USA on CBS [cbs.com] and, apparently, is also available for streaming on-line [cbssports.com].

Advertisements: Over the years, it has grown to be a spectacle where the game play is occasionally overshadowed by the advertisements. An advertisement during this year's game sets a new record of over $5 Million for a 30-second spot [statista.com]. Some of the most memorable ads of all time premiered during the Super Bowl. Who can forget the Macintosh 1984 ad or Michael Jordan and Larry Bird's game of "horse" where "nothing but net" became a meme?

An Experiment: In light of this opportunity, we are going to try something new for SoylentNews. We have set up a channel on our IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server especially for this game. The Patriots are favored to win over the Rams by two points, so the game may prove to be close... discussion about the game IS welcome. We are also offering a venue for people to discuss the ads that are broadcast, in real time. See an ad you thought was lame, say so! Laughed your butt off? Say that, too! The intent is to provide a shared space for the community to watch the game together.

Ground Rules: This is intended to be an enjoyable experience. In the sole discretion of the channel operators, ad hominem attacks, uncivil behavior, trolling, spamming, and politics are all grounds for getting kicked off the channel. Repeated violations will result in a ban from the channel and whatever other steps are deemed necessary to make it an enjoyable place for people to hang out and discuss the game. In short, we are inviting you to our "living room" — have fun, but don't crap on our carpet. Let's put our differences aside and gather together for a shared community experience! Sorry, no catering is provided, so you'll have to BYOB (bring your own... bacon =).

Details: Use your favorite IRC client or use the convenient link [soylentnews.org] in the left-hand slashbox titled "SoylentNews". If you are new to IRC, these commands may be helpful:

# Pick a name for use on IRC:
/NICK mynickname

# Join the channel (be careful with the spelling!)
/JOIN #SuperBowlLIII

If you have any questions about getting connected, I'd advise joining an hour or so before the game; I'm sure folk will be ready and willing to help.

Lastly, Have Fun, enojoy the game, and may the best team win!


Original Submission