When Super Bowl LVI kicks off at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., it will symbolize a homecoming of sorts. After all, 55 years ago the very first Super Bowl played out in the balmy shadow of the HOLLYWOOD sign as well. A lot has changed since then—both in terms of football’s ascent as the national pastime and the size and scale of big-studio blockbusters—but the NFL and movie industry have, in many ways, matured into hand-over-fist success stories, side by side. In fact, you could say that the first Big Game between the AFL and NFL champions at the Los Angeles Coliseum was its splashy Tinseltown premiere.
Illustration by The Sporting Press; Getty Images (Any Given Sunday); Everett Collection (Two-Minute Warning); LMPC/Getty Images (Black Sunday blimp); Warner Bros./Everett Collection (Goonies, The Blind Side); Warner Bros./Getty Images (Hooper, Police Academy 2); Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection (Heaven Can Wait); Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images (Black Sunday); Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports (SoFi sign); Bettmann/Getty Images (Namath); Ben Oldender/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images (jet pack)
Today, the NFL’s marquee event reaches 150 million viewers around the world. Meanwhile, Hollywood is responsible for one of the U.S.’s leading exports: pop culture. And the synergy between football and the film industry has never been stronger. The Super Bowl gooses its ratings each year with its starry, shock-and-awe halftime shows, while the movie industry shells out $5.5 million for each 30-second ad during the Big Game to give sneak peeks at its latest shoot-the-works franchise wares. Sometimes it seems as if one uniquely American form of escapist entertainment is eating its own tail—at a corner booth at the Ivy, naturally.
