Rihanna x The Superbowl

There are no two human endeavours more uniting and emotive than music and sport. They speak directly to our sense of identity and they toy with our ancestral tribal instincts. Both exist in a state of liveness where one moment creates the next, where all can be won but also all can be lost. One wrong foot, one wrong beat, and the entire audience can crumble. The thrill of the high note which defies physical limitations; the jump that defies gravity and the horse that beats the odds all ignite our inner hero and boost our self belief, reminding us that we too are capable of greatness.

Scientifically the viewer or the listener is not just watching the action unfold, they’re subject to waves of dopamine flooding their body, and through the brains mirror neurons they are able to sympathise physically and emotionally, existing in the moment alongside their heroes. In this modern day where sport and music are so often intertwined, music can act as a catalyst to release us from the cage of hormones that a tense sporting moment has built up, allowing the joy and pain out of the body and into a shared space of euphoria and catharsis. Stadiums of thousands of people suddenly belong to that moment and forever carry its memory as a nostalgic highlight informing their sense of self, community and sometimes even family.

The Super Bowl is without a doubt the pinnacle of combined sporting and music events, and this Sunday we welcome the NFL’s final football playoff which will be performed to the tune of Rihanna’s Road To Halftime for a live audience of 63,000, a TV audience of 15 million, and streaming audiences of music and sports fans globally. After she’s spent 4 years away from the live stage, what a comeback!

When the first Halftime Show took place in 1967 it was played by the Arizona State University Marching Band. In 1972 Ella Fitzgerald was centre pitch but it wasn’t until 1993 when Michael Jackson took the stadium by storm that the musical component of the Super Bowl became a household fixture. Since then the annual event has landmarked the careers of titans including Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Sting, The Rolling Stones, Prince, Usher, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Eminem and now, Rihanna. It’s no wonder then that a 2022 survey found that the Halftime Show was more important than the game itself for 18% of viewers in the USA.

Paying $50million per year for the rights to the Halftime Show and ending the era of Pepsi’s ownership over one of the world’s most primetime advertising slots, Apple Music are now diversifying the ways in which the Halftime Show is available to audiences across their digital services.

Why is this so interesting? In merging two worlds of fandom, the tech and sports giants collaborate to generate the ultimate space for engagement, which in turn feeds back into the NFL’s relevance on screens. Originally exclusively a live show, the commercialisation of domestic televisions made this a household fixture, and now the NFL and its collateral is in the pocket of 67% of the global population, of which 88 million are Apple Music subscribers.

Designed specifically for engaging a younger demographic and to encourage GenZ adoption of the services, Apple Music’s reinvention of the radio format is underpinned with engagement tools that bring the fan into proximity with their icons. Now, they can share content with one another to identify within a fabric meta reality woven from passion. In turn the NFL who have sustained and evolved their place on the global stage with their carefully articulated sonic branding since the get go, deepen their reach in their fans’ experience, increasing the sense of belonging and subsequent loyalty across the world.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in how music can be employed to trigger instinctive connection to the primordial flame of team spirit. It is safe to say that the Super Bowl has set the bar incredibly high for the rest of the sporting world, who are now looking to replicate the action, harnessing the combined power of music and sport to create: The Ultimate Experience.

This article was written for Future-Sound

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