HOUSTON — Good morning. This is Leadoff, the early buzz in Atlanta sports, Super Bowl edition.
Everyone has a Super Bowl prediction. ESPN.com has 68 of them.
The website’s “staff of writers, editors, analysts, columnists and pundits” made their predictions for Sunday’s game between the Falcons and the Patriots.
Forty-five picked the Patriots. Twenty-three favored the Falcons.
Of those picking the Pats to win, predicted scores were as close as 23-22, as not-close as 34-17, as high-scoring as 38-35 and as low-scoring as 27-13.
And of those favoring the Falcons, predicted margins of victory ranged from as little as one point to no more than eight points. One picked the Falcons to win a 38-30 shootout. Another saw a 17-14 victory.
Click here for all 68 predictions.
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Buying tickets to the Super Bowl is unlike buying tickets to other major sports events, both in price and in process.
Neither the NFL nor the participating teams put Super Bowl tickets on sale to the general public or even to season-ticket holders in any substantial number, meaning relatively few fans get access to the game at face value.
“The Super Bowl really stands alone because the demand is unmatched for any other sporting event,” said Joris Drayer, a Temple University sport-management professor who researches ticket pricing. “The supply and demand don’t match and won’t until you have a 200,000-seat stadium.”
Even with games played in 70,000-plus seat stadiums, much of the ticket supply is gobbled up by the NFL’s corporate and media partners.
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A decline in the NFL's television ratings was a big topic of conversation around the league for much of the season. The issue also has come up during Super Bowl week.
Falcons owner Arthur Blank said he was encouraged that ratings rebounded after the presidential election.
“What happened was that through Week 10 of the season, our ratings were down by 14 percent. After Week 10 on through Week 17, the ratings were actually only down by 1 percent,” Blank said on Fox Business Network. “So clearly it was affected by the race and by the election.
“I think the league is in a fairly good position when you normalize for the election process.”
Still, he said the league is looking at all aspects of how TV viewership habits are evolving.
And NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suggested some changes will be made in the flow of the games.
Click here for more.
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About a dozen representatives of the Atlanta committee planning the 2019 Super Bowl will tour Houston's NRG Stadium today. They also will tour various venues being used for ancillary events and will meet with Houston organizers and NFL officials.
The Atlanta group will be joined by similar delegations from Minneapolis, which will host the 2018 Super Bowl, and Miami, host of the 2020 game.
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