• The Super Bowl is a useful measure of which firms and sectors believe themselves to be the future of the economy, and can be used to detect bubbles.
• In 2000, 14 dot-com companies bought ad time in the Super Bowl, but the dot-com bubble had popped the next year.
• Last year, a cluster of crypto companies ran ads during the Super Bowl, but since then, crypto-asset values have crashed and several crypto firms have gone bankrupt.
• This year’s Super Bowl is going to feel a lot like 2019 or 2020, with Anheuser-Busch leading all firms with three minutes of airtime and other alcohol brands, M&M’s, Doritos, movie studios, and automakers also in.
• The yo-yo nature of the pandemic economy has caused many economic activities to go up and down, including gas prices, shipping costs, durable goods, savings rates, housing investment, and tech employment.
• The crypto bubble reflected in last year’s Super Bowl is a microcosm of the U.S. economy, and although the 2023 Super Bowl clearly represents a return to the old normal, the bursting of the crypto bubbles may presage the rise of a new digital economy.
Published February 12, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Derek Thompson’s original post The Super Bowl Is an Economic Indicator
