The Super Bowl's origins lie in the creation of the American Football League (AFL) in 1960. Super Bowl is the annual playoff championship game of the National Football League (NFL), played by the winners of the league’s American Football Conference and National Football Conference each January or February. The game is hosted in a different city each year. 

The rise of Super Bowl 

The name “Super Bowl '' first appeared in 1969 and the game was created as a merger between the American Football League (AFL) and NFL World Championship and was played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on January 15, 1967. The game was originally called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game until the “Super Bowl” moniker was adopted in the 1969s.

The first two games were ‌played as a merger, with the NFL and AFL each winning; after the merger in 1970, the 10 AFL teams and 3 NFL teams formed the American Football Conference (AFC). The remaining 13 NFL teams formed the National Football Conference (NFC). 

The day of the Super Bowl game is known as Super Bowl Sunday, which has now evolved into an unofficial American holiday, with viewing parties held in homes, taverns, and restaurants throughout the country. The week before the game is highlighted by extensive media buildup and a festival atmosphere in the host city. 

Since 2022, the game is played on the second Sunday in February; all prior Super Bowl games were played on Sundays in early to mid-January from 1967 to2021. Furthermore, all winning teams are awarded the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after the eponymous coach who won the first two Super Bowls. 

The Super Bowl is among the world's most-watched single sporting events and frequently commands the largest audience among all American broadcasts during the year. It is second only to the UEFA Champions League final as the most-watched annual club sporting event worldwide, and the seven most-watched broadcasts in American television history are Super Bowls.

During the Super Bowl broadcast, commercial airtime is the most expensive of the year because of the high viewership, leading to companies regularly developing their most expensive advertisements for the broadcast and commercial viewership becoming an integral part of the events.

2022 Super Bowl 

On Sunday, over 29 million US households tuned in to watch the 56th Super Bowl halftime show with the remarkable performance of Kendrick Lamar, Mary J Blige, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dog, 50 cents; Eminem, and Anderson Paak; five of these performers have a total of 42 Grammys and 21 Billboard No. 1 albums.

British designer Es Devlin paid tribute to the Californian city of Compton through the architectural iconography for the state's design for this year’s Super Bowl show.

Inspired by Dre’s sense, the stadium floor cloth was printed using high-resolution aerial photographs of Compton, which a local helicopter pilot took.  

Devlin says their replica buildings all feature a “bone” or “stone” colored tone, functioning “like neon-lit museum pieces” to frame the human story within them. The Compton buildings chosen for the set include The Martin Luther King Memorial and The Compton Courthouse, a replica of Tam’s Burger West Rosecrans Avenue, and an Audio Achievement Recording Studio.